When Only Love Remains

by Durjoy Datta

  ‘Okay. Fine.’

  Avanti doesn’t talk for a while and they walk randomly taking unknown turns, often reaching dead ends, at which they smile and turn back.

  ‘So you dropped out of engineering?’ asks Avanti after a while. Devrat nods.

  She doesn’t ask him why but he still tells her, ‘Because I was scared.’

  ‘Scared of?’

  ‘I didn’t like it. I feared what if I didn’t make a good engineer? What if at the end of four years I have like ten back papers? If that makes any sense.’

  ‘But didn’t you want to sing? Rather than being an engineer?’

  ‘Yes, but I could have done both. I chose this. There are less chances of me failing here. At least I will fail doing something I like more,’ says Devrat softly, wondering if he should open up more.

  Avanti nods. Devrat wonders what he has to say to keep this conversation going. He’s almost a little scared by the idea of ‘him’ in Avanti’s head and whether he’s even close to matching up to that.

  He walks on hoping she wouldn’t be disappointed by who he really is.

  Thirteen

  The first time she would meet him, that first look, that first conversation, that eye-lock, that laugh, things that Avanti had planned in explicit detail have all gone out of the window. Her first rendezvous with Devrat is nothing like she had imagined it to be. Nothing like what she had constructed him to be in her head.

  She’d thought he would be the definition of a bad boy with a broken heart, someone who would be inaccessible, hard to talk to, someone who would be easy to be labelled as arrogant, someone who you could look at in the future and say that you had a crush on him till the time you actually met him. But this is different. Devrat is different. He’s human, more like a puppy, but yeah, human. She can talk to him, like actually talk, and he answers like he’s not the Devrat she had obsessed over since forever. The question in her head is not whether to like the Devrat who’s in front of her, it’s how not to fall for him, how not to cling to him, how not to let this walk end. Because he is not the bad boy she had imagined him to be, he’s way better than that.

  ‘When do you leave?’ asks Devrat.

  ‘Tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Avanti likes the sound of that ‘Oh’. It’s filled with disappointment.

  ‘So a layover is just one day?’

  ‘Yes, a day and a night. I’m staying at the Taj,’ answers Avanti and wonders if Devrat would take it as an invitation. She panics suddenly, what if he does, what if he comes over, what if he kisses me like he probably kisses girls he picks up from his performances, what if something more happens? Avanti hasn’t been as promiscuous (with the exception of Shekhar who was just a mistake) as a lot of her classmates have been and she’s proud of it. But now she’s thinking she should have been. A little experience would have helped a long way. Right now, she’s just a nervous wreck. Devrat doesn’t take the invitation.

  ‘I live two blocks away,’ says Devrat. ‘It’s the poorer pocket of this area. We have been walking for long.’

  ‘I hope it’s not an invitation,’ says Avanti and drops the ball in his court.

  ‘It never is. Usually, I just tell people where I live and show them my dilapidated apartment from the outside so that they can pity me,’ answers Devrat. Avanti looks for hints of sarcasm in his tone but there’s none.

  ‘I’m sure it’s not that bad.’

  ‘You have no idea, Avanti.’

  ‘But you’re . . . Devrat? Aren’t you almost like a celebrity?’

  ‘Yes, for you, I am. Maybe for someone on the Internet, for someone who’s sitting two thousand kilometres away. But for my landlord I’m still someone who’s ruining his flat and pays rent three days late.’

  ‘You’re a boy.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean? I’m supposed to be a boy, am I not?’ asks Devrat, confused.

  ‘No, but I like you and I don’t like boys. I like tall successful men with cars and big houses and not boys.’

  ‘My bad.’

  ‘But I like you.’

  ‘I don’t know how to react to that because that statement can mean a lot of things,’ says Devrat.

  ‘Don’t react because let me figure out first what that really meant,’ says Avanti. She mutters ‘I like you’ again in her head.

  They sit down on a bench. It’s two in the night now. Avanti is sure that Devrat thinks of her as a clingy, confused, psychopath of a girl who just told him that she likes him and where she’s putting up for the night. God! I’m such a loser!

  Avanti, just to sound modest and to ensure it’s not the last time she’s meeting Devrat, gets up from the bench. ‘I think I should leave. I have an early morning flight tomorrow. It was nice meeting you.’ She thrusts out her hand, totally formally, hoping this would be enough to leave Devrat with an impression that she’s not clingy. (Though she tries to remember what Devrat has done till now to suggest that she has been the only participant in the night’s proceedings.)

  Devrat shakes her hand. ‘Let’s get you a cab.’

  Avanti’s devastated but she, too, joins him at the edge of the pavement trying to wave down a cab. Five cabs pass by and none of them stops. Avanti suppresses a smile. She hopes they don’t find a cab at all.

  ‘They are probably thinking I bought you from somewhere.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ asks Avanti, feigning anger, fully knowing what it means.

  ‘I would have no business doing anything with you at this time of the night. You could be some model moonlighting as an escort.’

  ‘Strangest. Compliment. Ever.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s strange at all. Look at you and look at me. You’re way too pretty to be standing next to me.’

  Avanti blushes and wonders if he can see her red cheeks in the dark.

  They wave down a cab. Avanti curses under her breath. Why did the cab drive have to stop?

  Avanti and Devrat have an awkward moment where they neither hug nor they shake hands. They just end up waving at each other. Avanti puts on a smile that’s as fake as it gets because inside, she feels like she’s dying, and the cab is not a cab but a Dementor, a monster sucking out all of her happy thoughts.

  ‘Bye,’ she says, her heart sinking to the bottom of her stomach. She doesn’t want to leave.

  ‘Bye,’ Devrat says and it only makes Avanti sadder.

  She’s is in the cab, the cab begins to move and it looks a little bit like a movie scene as the cab picks up speed and Devrat’s walking, and then jogging.

  ‘Hey! Hey!’ Devrat shouts.

  Devrat knocks on the window just as the taxi guy is about to put the car into the third gear. The car stops. Devrat knocks on the window. Avanti first smiles, then realizes she has to open the door, a little confused as to what’s happening.

  ‘Open the door,’ says Devrat. Avanti complies only too happily.

  Devrat shuffles inside the cab and sits right beside her. Avanti wants to beam at him, maybe throw her arms around him, but she tones it down to a weak smile.

  ‘I just thought it was a little dangerous for you to travel alone late in the night. So . . .’

  The driver who understands, frowns.

  ‘That’s so sweet of you,’ says Avanti. ‘Also, the food back at my hotel is great. That is, if you don’t mind. You know, Devrat, it will be a lot less painful if you can at least act like the celebrity you are.’

  ‘But I’m not a celebrity.’

  ‘It would have been easier if you still did. You would have been a lot less adorable,’ says Avanti.

  The car humbly rolls on, and the cab driver struggles with the gear box that juts out from the steering column every time the car comes to a halt.

  ‘Thirty-five rupees,’ says Avanti.

  ‘What?’
>
  ‘Our tentative cab fare to the hotel.’

  Devrat looks on surprised. ‘Umm?’

  ‘Oh. I’m sorry. It’s just a little game I play with myself every time I sit in a cab.’

  ‘What game?’ asks Devrat.

  ‘I kind of try to guess what the cab fare will be like. It’s a function of the speed, the rate per kilometre and the expected traffic.’

  ‘Are you still drunk?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘No, I was kidding. It’s fascinating!’ says Devrat. ‘So you don’t guess, you calculate?’

  ‘Kind of.’

  ‘Don’t you think it’s a little too intelligent for a flight attendant to do that?’ asks Devrat.

  Avanti blushes. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘But why do you do that?’

  Avanti tells Devrat that her father taught her this. It’s one of the only few incidents she remembers of her father—sitting in an auto trying to calculate what the cab fare would be at the end of it.

  ‘Your father is?’ asks Devrat, unsure whether he should venture into that territory.

  ‘He’s a mathematician. Usually, all these mathematical geniuses go crazy after they have stumbled on something great, or solved something, but my father started the other way around. He started crazy.’

  ‘Umm.’

  ‘It’s okay. I don’t feel bad about it. Maybe a little bit about my mother, that I couldn’t see much of her, but not so much about my father.’

  ‘But you live with him?’

  ‘Yes. But it feels like a paying guest accommodation. We don’t talk. If anything I feel a little guilty that I don’t feel anything for him. Except a little pity,’ says Avanti, remembering how her father had come to the airport, lying to her that he, too, had a flight, shared a seat with her on the cab, and then went back. She clearly remembers the searching eyes of her father.

  ‘What about your parents?’ asks Avanti.

  ‘I’m their weakness I think. They obsess over me. I’m an only child after all. So they do try to shackle me at times, lay down rules, but they eventually bow down to whatever I say.’

  ‘I don’t blame them. You can be a weakness for anyone.’

  The cab stops near the lobby of the hotel. The fare is thirty-six rupees. Avanti shoots an ‘I told you so’ smile at Devrat who acknowledges her brilliance.

  And then, just like that, they are in her room.

  Fourteen

  ‘I think I will just come out and say it,’ says Avanti. ‘I’m not going to sleep with you tonight.’

  Devrat chuckles. ‘Should I go back then?’

  Avanti’s face drops. Devrat laughs and says, ‘I wasn’t looking for that.’

  For the first time in forever Devrat isn’t concerned about the little sexual vibe between the two of them. He has taken it in his stride and he’s enjoying the journey. The prospect of her not sleeping with him doesn’t bother him, but the prospect of him having to leave the room disturbs him.

  Avanti makes the coffee in the hotel room’s machine and it isn’t half-bad.

  ‘I love hotel rooms,’ says Devrat.

  ‘I do, too,’ beams Avanti. ‘I just love how I can mess up the room and come back and the room is all cleaned up.’

  Devrat looks around. There’s a pile of clothes, neatly folded, lying in a corner. ‘So this is what you left for the cleaning guy?’

  ‘Yes, kind of. I’m a nightmare to the bellboys.’

  Devrat wants to go and sit on the fluffy bed in front of him, where Avanti’s sitting, but not because of her, but the bed. Maybe a bit because of Avanti as well.

  Devrat drinks from the complimentary bottle of water. ‘I love room service.’

  ‘Here.’ Avanti throws the receiver towards him.

  Devrat orders a pizza, a one with a lot of toppings, an expensive one, thinking it must be paid for by the airline. It’s only later that he comes to know that it comes out of Avanti’s allowance.

  The pizza arrives and the bellboy keeps it next to the bed. Devrat finally takes this as an opportunity to shift to the bed.

  Avanti excuses herself.

  ‘I just need to change,’ she says and comes back a little later in loose, faded pink pjyamas and an oversized Kolkata Knight Riders T-shirt. She’s carrying a room freshener in her hand.

  ‘What’s that for?’

  ‘Umm. If we eat on the bed, it’s going to smell like that all night and tomorrow morning.’

  ‘You mean you don’t eat on the bed? Then what do you eat on?’ asks Devrat, shocked, for all his life has been spent eating on beds with newspapers covering them. Lately, the only reason why the bedsheets of his apartment were being washed was because they had one too many stains on them.

  Avanti squeamishly looks at the table. ‘Fine,’ Devrat says and shifts the pizza back to the table.

  ‘It smells amazing!’ they both say together and then laugh.

  ‘You look nice,’ Devrat says as he cuts a slice that is floppy and dripping with cheese and toppings.

  ‘Aren’t you late with the comment? I just changed.’

  ‘No, you look better now. I like your hair, ruffled and unkempt, also the loose T-shirt and the pyjamas. It makes me feel like I’m on a holiday. And an expensive holiday at that,’ says Devrat and looks around the room.

  Soon they find themselves on the bed, three feet of distance between them, yet sharing the same blanket, the remote lying midway between them. Devrat’s feet were on the blanket for a little over half an hour, and he was shivering yet not acting on it. Avanti made him get inside the blanket and since then he has been a little awkward about the proximity of Avanti’s legs with his.

  The movie isn’t all that funny, but at the slightest joke Devrat laughs and looks at Avanti who looks back and they laugh together. Devrat is frightfully aware of the distance between them. He doesn’t want to get any closer. It’s like doing that would spoil everything that had happened and everything that could happen. Yet the knowledge of her bare feet a few feet away from his toes tickles him and his heart beats harder. Even a little tug at the blanket makes his heart go aflutter. She looks beautiful. Her lips without the lipstick now are a faint pink, always a little parted, a hint of tiredness. Her skin now without the compact is marred with little marks, making it real and soft and human. She looks prettier tired and haggard than made-up and proper.

  ‘You’re beautiful,’ says Devrat.

  ‘Hmm?’

  And then there is a knock at the door.

  ‘Must be the bellboy to get the empty plates,’ says Avanti.

  Devrat tells her that he will get it. He jumps down and heads towards the door. The door is knocked on again. This time more firmly. He fiddles with the lock, opens the door, and a fist comes rushing to meet his face. It crashes right into his nose, he can hear the slow crunching sound it makes, and then he’s on the ground.

  ‘BASTARD. YOU FUCKING BASTARD.’ Devrat can hear someone shouting.

  Before he can get his hand up to his face, which is now bloodied and battered, he feels his jaw shatter against a knuckle. It’s hard. ‘This is what Admantium feels like,’ Devrat’s thinking as he’s passing out . . . I just got hit by the Wolverine, that’s a cool way to die, he thinks.

  ‘I will kill you! I will fucking kill you!’ He hears a boy shout. And just before his eyes close Devrat sees the heavy boots of the boy hover over his face.

  He can hear faint noises of Avanti screaming in the background.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ she’s screaming.

  Devrat turns and lies prostrate on his stomach now, too dazed to get up and start walking towards him. His nose is dripping with blood and the carpet is crusted now. Devrat shakes his head and tries to make sense of what the two of them are talking about. This is his heroic moment, he thinks. He will find t
he dying shreds of life in him, stagger to his feet, and just when the boy would be about to hit her, he would smash his face with something . . . umm . . . with the iron that’s lying face-down on the ironing board. Yes, perfect, he thinks. He tries getting up but falls back on the ground, his head spinning. So this is what a concussion feels like, he thinks.

  ‘Who is he? You have been fucking other men behind my back, aren’t you? I knew it! All air hostesses do that. All of you are sluts! Goddamn sluts!’

  ‘We are flight attendants. We call ourselves flight attendants, not air hostesses,’ mutters Avanti.

  ‘WHAT! WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Why did you do this to me?’ thunders the boy. ‘I had everything. I gave you every damn thing! I will kill him. I will just kill him!’

  Devrat hears the boy’s feet thump on the carpet and inch towards him but they stop when Avanti rams into him.

  ‘Leave him! It’s not him. It’s me. I’m so sorry. It’s my fault!’ says Avanti.

  The boy still walks towards Devrat, grabs him by the collar and rams him against the wall.

  ‘Did you fuck her?’

  Devrat tries to tell him that he only just met her but the boy thunders again, ‘DID YOU FUCK HER?’

  Devrat’s face is all bloodied but he still says with a smile. ‘I wish I had because you have beaten me up any way.’

  Avanti chuckles at that but stops. ‘Stop it, Shekhar.’ She’s wrestling with Shekhar’s arm but it’s a big arm and Avanti is frightfully weak against it.

  ‘DID YOU FUCK HER?’

  Shekhar’s hand is wrapped firmly around Devrat’s neck and even though Devrat is trying to talk he can’t. He still mutters illegibly. ‘You are asking the same questions twice.’

  ‘TELL ME! You fucking, rotting piece of Bengali shit.’

  ‘I’m a Bengali, too, asshole!’ mutters Avanti, not knowing from where she got the strength to call Shekhar that. She’s not even crying right now and that’s a first.

  Shekhar’s grip loosens a little on Devrat and he says, ‘And we gave you the national anthem and the national song. Also, the roshogolla and communism.’