When Only Love Remains

by Durjoy Datta

  After about twenty minutes, he takes a break, thanks the crowd and tells them that he will be back after ten minutes. The crowd cheers. Avanti frowns. ‘He’s mine,’ she thinks, ‘I found him!’

  ‘He’s damn good,’ says Namita.

  ‘I wish he was not. I wish he sucked. I wish he was the worst singer ever.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Look at the girls, Namita. They were staring at him! Why were they staring at him? How dare they stare at him?’

  ‘Because he’s cute, Avanti, that’s why!’

  ‘But I noticed him first. I found him,’ says Avanti and mock-cries.

  ‘Aw, that’s sweet.’

  ‘It’s a lost cause, Namita. He will get famous some day, cut his own music album, sing for movies, sleep with movie stars, get married, cheat on his wife, and get divorced. Please take me to a mental asylum. I think I belong there and not here. If I stay here for a minute longer, I will pack him up in my handbag like a little Chihuahua, throw in a few puppy treats, and take him home. Damn it, Namita, I will never be able to get married now,’ sighs Avanti.

  ‘And why is that?’ asks Namita.

  ‘After he’s successful and divorced, alcoholic and abusive, I will marry him. I will be the only one around and we will grow old together and shit,’ answers Avanti and bangs her head against the table.

  ‘You’re over-reacting. Here, take this,’ says Namita and pushes the drink in front of her. Avanti gulps it. The taste is immaterial now, her tongue is flapping around, drunk, and her tastebuds are either dead or have passed out.

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Let the guy rest, Avanti. He just sang non-stop!’

  ‘Why am I not happy listening to the songs I have listened to a million times now? No, I’m happy, but I’m not. Why is that?’ asks Avanti. Oh God! I’m drunk again. Why am I so stupid?

  ‘Chill. We will go talk to him when this ends. I will make a cordon and make sure no girl gets to him,’ announces Namita.

  ‘Fuck me.’ Avanti bangs her head on the table. ‘I’m going back to the hotel.’ Avanti tries to get up but Namita holds her down.

  ‘You need to get it together. It’s not a big deal.’

  And just then Devrat comes back. The crowd cheers and he belts out a few songs which are even better than the ones he sang earlier.

  ‘I’m in love for life and beyond,’ whispers Avanti in Namita’s ears.

  Twelve

  devrat

  The break always screws it up for him. Everything goes right till the time his phone vibrates and it’s time for him to let his throat rest. It’s not because he needs it. It’s because the pub needs to sell. And breaks are the time (if the singer is good enough) when people while waiting for the gig to restart order the most. He’s behind the door, watching the crowd order their next round of drinks and french fries and pastas. In the crowd, there’s one girl who caught his fancy. Far well dressed than anyone who would come to listen to his music, she was the only one in the crowd who was mouthing each word of every song.

  The girl looks strangely familiar. He tries to think where he has seen her but he draws a blank. He remembers having seen her not once but quite a few times but can’t place her.

  And now that he’s back on the stage and singing again, he’s trying hard not to look at her, he’s trying not to stare at her hair that’s in a bun a moment and is falling all over her face the next, he’s trying not to want to touch her skin, which seems more airbrushed than a Vogue cover, he’s trying to get his fingers stuck in the strings, and bleed. And he has to bleed to sing better. Where have I seen this girl? God! She’s beautiful!

  He’s getting frivolous in his head as he’s singing as he’s happy. He’s in a pre-crush stage, and it’s apparent in his singing. So to make sure he’s depressed, he forces himself to think that he’s already dating the girl in the crowd he has been looking at, but has just got to know about her affair with another guy, a guy richer and more accomplished, possibly more endowed in the groin area as well. Now he’s suitably depressed and he’s singing well. In his head, he’s in love with the girl and the girl has already broken his heart.

  Damn it! She’s so gorgeous!

  The fact that the girl is still swaying her head from side to side singing every lyric in the song only makes Devrat try harder. It’s the last song and he fears that the girl will leave the pub after he’s done so he sings another song, a song he doesn’t sing often, but the girl knows the lyrics of that song too.

  The song ends. Devrat takes longer than usual to wrap up his stuff. Usually after any performance, Sumit and Devrat take to a corner table and sit there for a while. Sumit always insists on it. It gives the people the chance to walk up to and talk to whoever was singing, and gives the singer the chance to tell them about their next performance.

  Today, there’s no Sumit and he’s nervous. He packs his guitar and the help takes it inside. He makes his way to the crowd, some ignore his presence, and some of them say, ‘Great job man!’ and a few talk in loud voices as how it wasn’t that great.

  He sits at a corner table and orders a beer. He doesn’t feel like drinking though. He feels like talking to the girl who’s now talking animatedly to her friend. She looks positively drunk but yet insanely cute. He tries not to stare in her direction.

  He’s sipping his beer, which is warm and bitter now, when he sees the girl shuffle in her chair. She’s walking towards him. Definitely a fan, nothing to panic about, Devrat thinks, although his palms are already sweaty and he can feel his pulse throb.

  ‘Hi,’ the girl says, ‘Avanti.’ She thrusts her hand out and Devrat shakes it. He smiles back at her. ‘Big fan,’ she says. Devrat thanks her and smiles. He doesn’t want her to just leave after saying this—he’s searching for words to say to her, words that will make her stay, continue the conversation.

  ‘I’m not that good. I’m pretty average. It’s not a surprise that out of the fifty people here, you’re the only one to walk up to me and tell me that I’m any good,’ he says. It’s the best he can come up with.

  ‘Never say that. I take offence to that. You’re not just good. You’re God,’ Avanti snaps back, the smile on her face, gone.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘I mean you’re good. You’re very good!’ Avanti gushes. She’s still standing near the chair facing Devrat, awkwardly, and Devrat doesn’t know how this conversation will go on. Should he ask her to join him and tell him more? Should he just tell her that it nice meeting her and send her off on her way? Since he doesn’t know he just sits there looking at her, and she looks at him, and they are smiling and shifting in their places. Devrat heaves a sigh of relief when Avanti starts to talk. She says, ‘I was just telling my friend back there that I have been listening to your songs for so long now.’

  Devrat looks in the direction to Avanti was pointing. ‘There’s no one there.’

  Avanti looks back and rolls her eyes. Namita has left. ‘I swear I came with a friend and she has left without telling me. Please don’t think I’m a freak with imaginary friends. You’re thinking that, aren’t you?’ says a panicked Avanti.

  ‘I saw the two of you when I was performing, so I believe you. And you can sit, that is, if you don’t have any other plans,’ says Devrat, and mentally taps his own back for being uncharacteristically cool. And you can sit, that is, if you don’t have any other plans? From where did he learn that?

  Avanti thanks him and takes the chair. Silence engulfs them.

  ‘Who are the songs for?’ asks Avanti, the words shoot out almost like a surprise, like a bullet from a gun she was holding beneath the table, her fingers place lightly on the trigger, something that she meant to do eventually. Eventually but not now, but she couldn’t control it, She panicked and just fired. ‘I’m sorry. You can choose not to answer that. I don’t know why I asked that. I think I was just jeal
ous of whoever you were thinking of while you wrote them,’ says Avanti and touches Devrat’s hand instinctively.

  ‘You don’t have to be sorry,’ says Devrat, trying not to look at her fingers that are still on his knuckles, a sensation he is acutely aware of. ‘I wrote those songs for whoever I have dated or liked.’

  ‘Oh.’ A tinge of disappointment comes on her face to think Devrat has dated before. It’s unreasonable, she knows, but that doesn’t help. Her eyebrows furrow and she quickly retracts her hand. The radiance of her face dies down a little, and with that Devrat’s heart shrinks, too.

  ‘The songs are exaggerated. I used to imagine that I loved them far more than I actually did, and that I was far more sad when they left me. It helps me write the songs better. And it helps me stay depressed.’

  Avanti giggles, which comes as a surprise to even herself because she never really giggles. ‘So you’re saying you stay sad and stay happy intentionally so that you can write better?’

  ‘Does that make me a freak?’ asks Devrat.

  ‘No matter what you do you will never be a freak. I can find a head in your` freezer and think that there might be a logical explanation to that.’

  Devrat laughs, much to his surprise as well. It’s probably a defence mechanism against the warmth that is taking over.

  ‘So? What do you do?’ asks Devrat. He has to remind himself that he’s the singer, and she’s the fan, that she has to be shy and he has to be rude and arrogant like a rock-star.

  ‘I’m a flight attendant,’ answers Avanti.

  ‘Are your parents okay with that?’ Devrat regrets the sentence as soon as the words leave his mouth for it’s kind of hypocritical of a guy who left his studies to be a moderately successful singer to ask what the parents of a flight attendant think.

  ‘My mother died when I was young and my father doesn’t really care, I think,’ says Avanti.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s okay. It doesn’t bother me much now. And whenever it does, your songs make it alright.’

  ‘You’re too kind.’

  ‘So how’s it being a flight attendant?’ asks Devrat, trying desperately to keep the conversation going, not wanting Avanti to say ‘nice meeting you’ and then walk off.

  ‘Shouldn’t we be talking about what you do, Devrat? What I do is boring and uninteresting compared to what you do.’

  And while Devrat tries to find an answer to that, he wants her to say his name again. It sounded so good. And he doesn’t want her to leave.

  ‘I think what you do is awesome,’ says Devrat.

  ‘If you insist I will not try to contest that.’

  ‘Do you want to have coffee somewhere?’ asks Devrat, in an uncharacteristic burst of confidence. But mostly it was panic that she would soon leave.

  ‘You haven’t finished your beer yet,’ points out Avanti.

  ‘I don’t need to. I ordered it to look cool and singer-like. I would rather have a strong coffee right now.’

  ‘Has no one told you that you don’t have to look cool and singer-like because you already rock that look pretty well?’ says Avanti and Devrat blushes profusely. She continues, ‘And there, you’re not only a cool-looking singer, but you can also blush. What more can a girl want?’ She’s looking so adorably at Devrat that he feels like a little two-year-old wrapped in a blanket. She adds, ‘And of course, I would love to go for a coffee although it’s slightly unbelievable that you just asked me to have coffee with you? You did, right?’

  ‘Yes.’ Devrat nods shyly. Devrat disappears in the back room of the club and picks up his guitar and his payment for the night.

  ‘Aapki girlfriend hai (Is she your girlfriend)?’ asks the club’s help, pointing at Avanti who’s visible through the little glass window of the back room. Devrat doesn’t answer. He stares out of that little window, his nose pressed against the glass, his breath fogging it, like a little kid outside a candy shop, and he sees Avanti pump her fist and she’s doing a little victory dance. There are people looking at her but she looks happy, almost a little deranged, but so happy that it’s infectious.

  Devrat leaves the back room and as soon as she spots him, she stands straight, smiling, lady-like and extremely beautiful.

  ‘Let’s go?’ says Devrat and they walk out from the pub. They walk next to each other, not talking much, just there, with each other. ‘Here?’ Avanti points to a roadside chai joint. ‘I love chai. My father makes the best tea ever.’ Avanti’s so excited with something so inconsequential as tea that Devrat’s just amused and he says, why not.

  ‘Aren’t you a bit over-dressed for this place?’ asks Devrat just as they take a seat at one of the wooden benches.

  ‘I’m from Delhi. I’m a flight attendant. I am always over-dressed. That’s my superpower. Don’t take that away from me.’

  ‘That sounds legit. I should put that on Twitter,’ says Devrat, laughing and that’s kind of new and Devrat’s liking it. If ever there would be a competition of developing a crush in the smallest timeframe possible, Devrat’s developing crush on Avanti would be right in the top rungs.

  ‘Twitter is hard. Facebook is better,’ says Avanti. ‘Upload pictures and wait for people to like it. Twitter is where people judge, Facebook is where people get jealous. Being intelligent all the time is hard and time-consuming.’

  ‘See. You can put that on Twitter.’

  Avanti giggles. ‘Stop giggling!’ Avanti tells herself.

  They order two masala teas and Devrat is smitten by how deft Avanti is with the little steel cup and the tumbler, pouring the tea between the two to cool it a little, while he struggles with it. Avanti helps Devrat out with it. Devrat is quite fascinated by it all, by the tea pouring, by the quick wit, and by her superpower.

  ‘Does it make it taste better?’ asks Devrat.

  ‘Does being sadder make your songs better?’ counters Avanti.

  Devrat smiles. They both sip from their tumblers.

  ‘I still can’t believe that I’m sitting right in front of you. RIGHT. IN. FRONT. OF. YOU. I have to tell you this. I have imagined this in my head so many times. I always thought what I would say, what I would do, how it would all turn out to be. And every time I used to think of it I would remove some detail and add some other detail in,’ says Avanti and after a pause adds ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Why are you sorry?’

  ‘You look like I have freaked you out.’

  ‘No, you haven’t. I’m just surprised. Because nothing of this sort ever happens with me. It’s the first time. And . . .’

  ‘Oh shut up!’ exclaims Avanti. ‘I’m sure it happens with you all the time. Look at your YouTube video. There are girls screaming in the comments section.’

  Devrat almost senses a tinge of anger in Avanti’s voice as she says that.

  ‘That’s now. But it’s been years since I first uploaded videos and sound clips and I always used to wonder who listens to them. It turns out that you used to listen to them!’ says Devrat.

  ‘What’s so surprising? You’re good. You always have been. I made so many girls listen to your songs when I was in the hostel. I’m sure a few of them believe in love because your songs made them believe that everyone had a guy out there waiting for them, who would be just like you, who would be everything that you are.’

  ‘I’m nothing.’ Devrat’s cheeks are flushed and warm and he’s blushing.

  ‘You need to stop with that, Devrat,’ says Avanti. ‘When I say I take offence to that, I really mean that. No one says a word against my favourite singer.’

  ‘Not even if he’s undeniably flawed.’

  ‘Not even then. It’s not that I have followed you, the person, I have followed an idea of you, an idea I had perfected over years, and you’re insulting that. Please let me hang on to that.’

  Devrat sips from his tumbler, thinking ho
w naturally and effortlessly he has slipped into a conversation with a girl who was a stranger twenty minutes ago but now seems like a safe repository for all his secrets. It’s true that she’s pretty beyond words, but now it doesn’t matter what she looks like. Even if she were a baby gorilla with buck teeth, scratching her belly, Devrat’s crush would have remained as is.

  ‘That’s kind of deep,’ says Devrat, not finding anything suitable to say. But if he’s a star in her mind, everything that he says has to be gold, right? It’s like lines from famous novelists are always quoted and re-quoted no matter how ordinary, while the lines from others languish in unsold books.

  ‘Is it? I think that’s because I’m a little drunk.’

  ‘Why would you think that?’ asks Devrat.

  ‘I’m usually very vain. I’m all about make-up and pretty clothes. That’s what defines me,’ says Avanti.

  The bill arrives and Devrat pays. Avanti tries to pay but Devrat protests and tells her that she shouldn’t insult the idea of him.

  ‘Knowing that you’re all about make-up and clothes makes you deep. At least self-aware,’ argues Devrat.

  ‘And what defines you?’

  They both get up. The roadside chai shop is about to shut down. The roads are almost deserted, with a sprinkling of a few yellow taxies, a few couples are walking on the pavement, out for a walk after the machher jhol and bhaat, in their sports shoes and sarees.

  ‘I don’t know what defines me,’ says Devrat. They pass a shop that sells rubber chappals and rip offs of expensive sneakers. Just before the owner pulls the shutter down, Avanti quickly buys a pair after a brief but effective negotiation where she tells the seller that she’s not a tourist and he better not try to rip her off, puts her heels in the poly bag and starts walking in those chappals. This is nice, thinks Devrat.