by Durjoy Datta
I Love u Rachu
48
‘Your blood isn’t on my hands now, all right?’ asked Dhruv. Aranya nodded, smiling widely. ‘What happened inside?’ Dhruv asked irritably, not wanting to let his imagination run wild.
Aranya didn’t answer; the happiness in her smile was unmistakable and it bothered Dhruv. He drove dangerously, swerving and weaving between trucks driving with the high beam on to distract himself from thinking about the two of them. They were still a couple of hours from Dhruv’s. Somewhere in the last fifty kilometres, Aranya had drifted off, clutching Dhruv.
‘Huh?’ Aranya woke up with a start and retracted her arms immediately. ‘Sorry, I didn’t know—’
‘It’s okay.’
Dhruv drove on, and Aranya, now wide awake, kept smiling foolishly, much to his chagrin.
‘Why the fuck are you smiling?’ asked an irritated Dhruv.
‘Huh? I’m not smiling,’ answered Aranya, crunching up her face in surprise.
‘Of course you are. Tell me what happened in there. I didn’t drive all the way from DTU to this professor’s house to be played games with. I need to know what happened in there,’ said Dhruv.
‘The deal wasn’t to tell everything!’ argued Aranya, the smile still pasted on her face. ‘Stop acting like my boyfriend.’
‘Listen. If I were your boyfriend I wouldn’t let you in sight of that man. I would have just ripped him apart. I have seen how he looks at you. Just tell me what happened inside.’
‘Whoa. Calm your tits down, Dhruv,’ said Aranya.
‘It’s not madness, it’s love, and you do these things when you’re in love. You keep nothing back and you give it your all. That’s what love is about. Losing yourself in it,’ said Dhruv, backing off.
‘I have never been in love. Oh wait! I have been in love. You were asking why I was smiling, right? That’s because I think I just fell in love.’
Dhruv wanted to drive back, drag Prof. Raghuvir out from his house and smash his head into his motorcycle’s headlight. He tried hard to keep his words inside him but they bubbled to the surface and spilled out of his mouth. ‘You’re so fucking weak, Aranya, so fucking WEAK. You kissed him, didn’t you? What did you do? That’s why you’re smiling, aren’t you? You moron. He told you he loves you, didn’t he? And you would have said you loved him back? What else can one expect from a girl like you.’ Dhruv pointed a finger right at her face in the rear-view mirror. ‘The moment a decent guy approaches, you give in! That’s not fucking love. That’s called being an attention whore and you’re exactly that! It comes from a deep-rooted insecurity about being fat and whatever the hell you look like. Yes, I said it again. You’re fat. You jiggle when you walk. The vibrations from your belly make the buildings tremble. Didn’t anyone fucking tell you that?’ And abruptly, Dhruv stopped talking. Aranya wasn’t offended the least bit—she was grinning. In the absence of a rebuttal to his words they sounded juvenile and empty.
‘I didn’t kiss him. Yes, he told me he loves me. Something like that. Also, I WAS an attention whore. Yes, I’m fat. I can’t say I’m particularly proud of it but I think I’m worth falling in love with. And today, I fell in love with myself. That’s something worth smiling about, isn’t it, Dhruv? Do you love yourself? Have you ever asked yourself that?’
‘Whatever.’
Of course he loved himself. He was shredded after all, wasn’t he? He put it back on.
Aranya asked after a little while, ‘Your father must be sleeping right now, wouldn’t he?’
‘More like passed out. You remember how he was, don’t you?’ said Dhruv.
‘You can choose not to go.’
‘I don’t go back on my word,’ snapped Dhruv.
‘Is that like your thing? You don’t go back on your word?’ Aranya chuckled. Dhruv didn’t find it funny. ‘Okay, fine, don’t frown, Dhruv. But why don’t you go back on your word?’
‘Because our words define us, otherwise what stops the world from descending into chaos?’
Aranya frowned. ‘So, you think if you don’t go and talk to your father the world will descend into chaos? Mountains would implode, whirlpools would swallow civilizations? That’s an exaggeration, don’t you think?’
‘It’s called the butterfly effect. Today, I go back on my word and I don’t go to my father. Anything can happen tomorrow. Tomorrow, I won’t be in Ritika’s class. She misses me and dumps me eventually. Angry, I take back my word and blame you for everything. Right when you’re about to enter your all-important interview, I shit all over your mood and you don’t get the job. Your parents, who had planned a party, start to hate you for it. I destroy Ritika’s new boyfriend who happens to be your friend. You hit back wanting to destroy me, but obviously, I’m stronger and more ruthless, and knock down everyone around you. Vengeful, you get Sanchit arrested for possession of weed. His father commits suicide. His sister comes after you with a knife and kills Raghuvir instead.’ Dhruv paused.
‘This would make such a good B-grade movie.’
‘There are consequences, Aranya. Everything we do has consequences,’ said Dhruv.
‘Why do you care?’
‘I’m a consequence.’
‘Dangling a line like that doesn’t make you mysterious; it makes you boring and laborious.’
Dhruv wanted to smack her beautiful face. He drove, wanting the roads to stretch out interminably.
I Love u Rachu
49
They hadn’t talked for the last hour. Aranya pretended to be asleep. She saw Dhruv wipe his tears more than a few times.
She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the rear-view mirror, from Dhruv’s stoic face as he concentrated on the road. She wanted to comfort him but how do you comfort someone like Dhruv? Dhruv entered his neighbourhood.
The watchmen saluted him, so did the kids out for early morning football matches.
‘This is where I live,’ said Dhruv, pointing towards a balcony on the third floor in an old, yellow building with flaking paint. ‘I will be back. You wait here,’ Dhruv said and walked towards the building. His strides got shorter as he got closer to the building and then he stopped altogether, and stared at his shoes.
‘What happened?’ asked Aranya, walking up to him.
‘Do you mind?’
‘. . .’
‘Do you mind coming with me?’ asked Dhruv, almost ashamed.
Aranya nodded and held his arm. They walked up the dilapidated stairwell. The granite beneath their feet was cracked in places, and the corners of walls had spider webs, it looked like it had not been cleaned in ages. Dhruv rang the bell twice. Aranya noticed Dhruv alternate between abject helplessness and anger.
‘Dhruv?’ His father—bloodshot eyes, matted hair, every bit what Aranya had imagined drunkards to be—seemed surprised. ‘Come, come.’ Dhruv walked in and his father almost stumbled on the shoes lined at the entrance. He was wearing a pair of trousers without a belt and a vest riddled with holes. Dhruv helped him just in time. The house stank of fermented beer and rotting food.
He asked them to sit on a lumpy, creaky sofa and went to the kitchen. Dhruv sat there rubbing his hands, sweating, as if it wasn’t his house.
‘Here,’ Dhruv’s father gave them two bottles. Soda bottles filled with water. He sat in front of them, grinning widely. His hair was sparse and his skin was marred with little marks.
‘You need to talk to my professor. I cheated in my exam and got caught. I might have to repeat a year if you don’t,’ said Dhruv, looking up, meeting his father’s eyes.
‘Actually, it was me who cheated,’ butted in Aranya. ‘He got caught saving me.’
Aranya saw Dhruv’s hand creep up to the almost empty bottle of Vodka on the side table. He unscrewed the cap and touched it to his lips.
‘DHRUV!’
Dhruv shrugged. ‘What? Like father like son. Did you expect anything better?’
‘You will NOT drink!’ His father stood up and snatched the bottle from hi
m. The drunken demeanour had been replaced by a murderous frown; his feet were no longer unsteady.
‘You’re a fucking hypocrite, Dad.’
‘I will smash your head if you swear in this house,’ thundered his father.
Dhruv turned away from him. He started to walk away. ‘It was a mistake coming here. I should have just left you to your misery.’
‘What else would you do?’ shouted his father to his back. ‘Go, leave me! GO! DO JUST WHAT YOUR MOTHER DID. GO.’
Dhruv looked back and stared him in the eye. ‘And what did you do? WHAT DID YOU DO, HUH? DID YOU FIGHT? NO! So fuck off and drink yourself to death.’ Dhruv waved the middle finger at his father.
‘Ha! My son! Full of innocent pride, aren’t you? Showing off in front of your female friend how great and sensible a man you are?’
‘I’m a better man than you were any day, Dad. You are nothing but a chronic disappointment.’
‘Then pray tell me something, son, when you left this house a couple of months ago with similar bravado, waving your finger at me, calling me an incompetent father, a drunkard, a pervert, you said you wouldn’t ask for a single rupee and yet I see you relentlessly swiping the debit card I gave you. What’s with that? Where does the Dhruv who doesn’t go back on his word disappear then?’
Dhruv clenched his fist; Aranya could sense a fight brewing. ‘That’s me giving you a chance to redeem yourself, Dad.’
His father laughed it off. ‘So benevolent of you, isn’t it?’
Dhruv’s jaw tightened, he took a few steps towards his father, then backed off and walked out of the room without a word. Aranya kept sitting there, awkward, scared.
She wondered if she would one day be able to stand up to her father and assert herself like Dhruv had just done. But he wasn’t an alcoholic and neither did he consort with prostitutes. A part of her wished he did. She got up to leave as well.
‘Here’s the professor’s number,’ Aranya said and handed over a piece of paper to Dhruv’s father. ‘Don’t disappoint him please.’
She left and quietly boarded the motorcycle. Dhruv handed over the helmet to her. In the rear-view mirror, she could see his face muddled up in tears, and it made her cry, and she hugged him tighter from behind for she didn’t know what else to do.
They stopped at the next petrol pump where Dhruv got his motorcycle refuelled. Dhruv’s phone started to ring; Ritika’s name flashed and Dhruv cut the call. ‘She will ask too many questions. I don’t think I can answer them right now,’ he said as if explaining.
‘You can just lie. I won’t tell her we were together. You know, whatever.’
‘I can’t lie to her.’
‘She won’t rest in peace if you don’t call her back,’ said Aranya. Not that she knew Ritika very well, but if someone had to be in love and in a relationship with Dhruv, anything less than total madness was cheating.
‘I will call her in some time to explain everything. I will have to tell her from scratch.’
‘Ummm . . . she doesn’t know about your parents?’ asked Aranya.
‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘I wasn’t ready for that kind of intimacy,’ said Dhruv.
Aranya didn’t quite understand what Dhruv meant but she nodded. They got on the motorcycle and drove back to the college. Aranya thought of what Dhruv had just said and what intimacy meant for her. She kept going back to the time she had almost thought of stripping in front of that boy on Skype. The thought of being naked in front of the boy had scared her shit. The fear of the boy knowing everything there was to know about her had gripped her and she hadn’t taken anything off. But Dhruv, driving heroically, stoically, felt naked to her, and so did she to him, for they had no secrets to hide any more and if that was not intimate then nothing was.
But of course, she couldn’t fall in love with him again.
I Love u Rachu
50
It was seven by the time Dhruv drove into the campus.
The students hadn’t woken up yet, having slept only a couple of hours earlier.
He turned towards the girls’ hostel to drop Aranya first. She hopped off the motorcycle, a little distance away from the prying eyes of her warden. A blip in his heart told Dhruv that he didn’t want her to leave.
‘Good morning,’ said Dhruv to prolong conversation; leaving her meant going back to his room, being alone with the thought of having met his father.
‘Will you be okay?’ asked Aranya.
Dhruv nodded. Aranya turned to leave when Dhruv stopped her.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘For what, Dhruv?’
‘For everything. For having called you ugly and repulsive and what not. I don’t think you’re any of that.’
‘It’s okay, Dhruv. I’m used to it now. Everyone calls me that.’
Dhruv smiled weakly and held her hand and said, ‘The next time someone calls you that, you need to come to me.’
‘And what will you do about it?’
‘I’ll make sure it’s the last time that person gets to speak. I have a great right uppercut. You can ask all the boys who have tried hitting on my girlfriends,’ said Dhruv and they both laughed.
And just then they heard a hyena cry out in the distance. It startled both of them.
He saw Ritika, still in her pyjamas, charge towards him, her arms flapping by her side. Her hair in disarray and her eyes sunken, quite clearly she had been up all night thinking about worst-case scenarios.
‘WHERE WERE YOU? AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH HER? I called Sanchit! He told me you were not in the campus. WHERE WERE YOU?’
Dhruv looked in Aranya’s direction like he wasn’t being verbally assaulted and said, ‘Bye, Aranya.’ Aranya, not wanting to be a part of their domestic squabble, quietly and quickly walked away.
‘ANSWER ME!’ shouted Ritika.
‘Sit,’ Dhruv said and cocked his head, motioning Ritika to sit on the motorcycle.
‘I’m not going anywhere with you. Answer me, first.’
‘SIT,’ Dhruv said.
Ritika, her chest still heaving in anger, climbed up and he drove to the far corner of the college and parked his motorcycle. Ritika screamed her questions in his ear. Dhruv sat on the pavement, lit a cigarette and started to fiddle with his phone. Ritika snatched it and flung it in the bushes. Dhruv would have slapped her but he was reminded of three of Ritika’s cellphones he had unapologetically smashed for talking to boys he had strictly warned her against. So he stayed put.
‘Why didn’t you pick up my calls? Were you out for the entire night? What the hell were you doing with her, Dhruv? I thought you hated her! And you were cutting my calls? Why? Dhruv!’ Ritika took the cigarette from his mouth and threw it away. ‘LOOK AT ME AND ANSWER ME, Dhruv. You can’t just keep treating me like shit.’
‘When did I treat you like shit?’ asked Dhruv. ‘And sit here.’
‘Shut up, Dhruv. I’m tired of listening to you. Don’t do this, don’t go there, and don’t talk to that guy. ENOUGH. I stay locked up in my room, and what the hell did you do? You were out with a girl! What happened last night, Dhruv? Dhruv, look at me and tell me what happened. If you had to break up with me, you could have had the damn decency to look at me and tell me that!’
‘I’m not breaking up with you, Ritika.’
‘Neither am I, Dhruv. After ruining my life and shooing away all my friends, I’m not letting go of you that easily. Now will you just tell me what on earth happened yesterday? Did you touch her?’
‘You need to stay calm, Ritika. Nothing happened.’
‘Then why were you with her? All my friends told me that you were with her! Aashima even saw you guys leave, but I didn’t believe her. GOD! I’m such a fool. Do you know how stupid I would look?’ Ritika slumped on the pavement next to him, and cried into her palms.
‘You’re overreacting, Ritika. She just needed to talk to Raghuvir and I needed to talk to my father. That’s all that happened.’
‘
You have destroyed me, Dhruv.’
‘Shut up, Ritika.’
‘I spend entire days trying to live like you want me to live. I don’t have a single friend I can call my own. All I think about is you and you. You just come and go as you like. Why? Look at me and respond to what I ask, Dhruv. What have you asked for and I haven’t given you, Dhruv? What else can I do to be a better girlfriend? For you to be like everyone else, like a normal boyfriend? Why do I have to settle for love in your hate? Why don’t you make me feel loved?’
‘I do everything a boyfriend does,’ Dhruv said irritably.
‘No, you don’t, Dhruv. Just because you beat up anyone who comes near me and make me feel protected doesn’t mean you love me. When was that one time you held my hand and told me I meant something to you? Dhruv, despite your damned bravado, you’re a scared little piece of shit inside. You don’t have the balls to accept your love for anyone. You’re just scared you will be the same wrecked shit everyone else is.’
‘Ritika, you need to calm the fuck down and shut up.’
‘What shut up. Say if it isn’t true.’ Ritika thrust a finger in his face. ‘You’re just crazy, Dhruv. You just pretend to be in love. And I’m tired of this. I’m tired of looking for signs to feel loved. Oh. Look at that. Dhruv just berated that girl, he must be in love with me. Oh. He just hit that boy black and blue, he must be in love with me. I’m tired, Dhruv. I’m just tired. I need normalcy. I don’t give a shit if you cheat on me, if you’re not committed, if you’re still in love with your ex-girlfriend. All I want is for you to be in LOVE with me when you’re with me. I can protect myself, Dhruv. I don’t need you for that. I want love from you and you clearly aren’t ready for it. And the FUCKING problem is that I can wait. I can wait for you to turn a full circle and come back to me.’ Ritika got up. ‘If you ever feel you’re ready to be in a relationship, I will be waiting. But before that, please don’t call me. We’ve broken up for now.’