‘Life’s unpredictable,’ Nivan said, ‘but if you don’t stand by your choice, it will become incorrigible too. That’s what the Stranger told me once.’ He looked at Rivanah who was blank.
‘What happened?’
Rivanah shook her head and said, ‘I think I’ll go home. Let’s catch up tomorrow. I shall ask Ishita to join us.’
‘All right.’ Nivan looked thoughtful.
Rivanah took a cab. She was feeling dazed. Never before had she coveted someone’s life like she now coveted Advika’s. She felt an unprecedented urge to snatch Nivan away from her, to cast an evil spell so Nivan would get lured to her, would make her his choice, and make her feel everything that he made Advika feel.
With that one confession, Nivan had raised her expectations of men. When Danny broke up with her, he had given her reasons to abhor men and think of them as beings who would never understand the complexity of a woman. But Nivan pushed those reasons into insignificance and convinced her in no time to still be hopeful in a hopeless way. And it was the worst space to be in—to see someone like a horizon, visible but not attainable. What is it which decides who deserves whom? On the verge of having an emotional breakdown, Rivanah messaged the Stranger:
I seriously need to talk. Please tell me you are there.
A few seconds later the Stranger replied:
At your house, Mini?
Rivanah made a mad dash for her house.
28
Rivanah called up her parents on the way, fearing their life may be in danger. But they both were in New Market, shopping. They told her they would be back by evening, and asked her to take the spare key from their neighbour. Rivanah didn’t let them get a whiff of her anxiety. The cab dropped her right in front of her house, and she went to the neighbour to collect the spare key. The neighbour wanted to chat, but Rivanah cut her short and walked up to the main door of her house and, looking around, slowly unlocked it. She peeped in first and then stepped in. She could smell It’s Different by Hugo Boss in the air.
‘You there?’ The drawing room was filled with darkness since all the curtains, she noticed, were drawn. She had never been so scared to enter her own house before.
‘Close the door, Mini,’ a voice commanded.
Rivanah shut the door behind her trying to identify where the voice had come from.
‘Take a seat.’
Now she knew where the voice was coming from. Behind the refrigerator, she could see the silhouette of the upper half of someone’s head as the head rested on folded hands atop the refrigerator. The Stranger’s figure was hidden by the refrigerator. Rivanah didn’t move for some time, while calculating what her next move should be.
‘Take a seat, Mini,’ the Stranger repeated. She went to the sofa and saw a blindfold and a handcuff on it. She knew what was expected of her, but was it necessary? She was about to object when she heard him speak again.
‘You move, I move out. You shout or run, you lose me. You don’t listen to me, this meeting is over.’
Damn you, she thought and put on the blindfold first and then locked her hands with the handcuff.
‘Happy?’ she said.
‘More than ever, Mini. Tell me, what do you want to talk about?’
‘I’ll be honest. Nivan told me how you were after him like the way you have been after me.’
‘I guessed that.’
‘Nivan also confessed to me about Advika.’
‘So?’
‘It made me realize that deep down I have always desired a man like Nivan. He is the personification of my idea of the man. Also, until today, I always thought I deserved a man like this. But do I really deserve someone like Nivan? If not, then why not? I want to know my flaw and rectify it because I’m sick and tired of the hypocrite men I have had in my life. One more and I’ll kill him.’ Her angst mixed with envy made the Stranger smile.
‘Do we deserve someone or not is a question that can’t be answered. It’s essentially a rhetorical question. But what can be answered is why you had the ones you had.’
‘Why did I have Ekansh? Why did I fall for Danny?’
‘Just like you were meant to love them genuinely, Ekansh and Danny were not meant to understand that genuineness of yours. Have you ever thought of looking at it this way: both Ekansh and Danny probably weren’t meant to be in a committed relationship with you? Maybe it was your misinterpretation of it. Whoever comes in and walks out of our life always has a role to perform. We simply don’t see it that way. Ekansh’s and Danny’s roles were to make you realize that people may claim they love you, but at certain moments of truth, it is proved that their love is superficial. Nivan’s role is to make you not give up on love in the first place.’
‘Will I be a bad girl if I tell you I want Nivan, knowing well he is committed for life? I know it started with him being a silly crush of mine, but today he has shaken my core. I feel like I have wasted my life seeking the kind of love Nivan has for Advika in Ekansh and Danny.’
The Stranger was quiet as Rivanah tried wiping the tears from under the blindfold with her handcuffed hands.
‘Why are you sad, Mini?’
‘I’m sad because after all this time that you have been asking me to know my worth—and I have probably known my worth to some extent—it still doesn’t make me eligible enough to deserve Nivan.’
‘You know, Mini, the toughest kind of acceptance is when we have to accept that there are certain things in life which can’t be ours—no matter how hard we try. It’s called growing up, Mini. It’s difficult—very, very difficult, but inevitable nevertheless. Worse, growing up doesn’t only happen as we turn eighteen. Growing up happens as our soul keeps swallowing these depressing acceptances little by little, one at a time. For no acceptance can happen overnight. It’s a bit-by-bit process. The way a patient is given saline. If you try to accept the fact that Nivan can’t be yours right at this moment, you will destroy yourself further.’
Neither spoke for a long time. Rivanah took her time to get a grip on her emotional self.
She felt a hand cupping her face. She sensed the Stranger was standing right beside her.
‘The surgery will soon be over. And any surgery without anaesthesia will cause pain. Just hold on for some more time, Mini. It’ll all be worth it. Trust me.’ His words made no sense to Rivanah.
‘What do you mean?’ Rivanah said, looking up. She felt something being thrust in her hand. It was the key to the handcuff. She immediately unlocked herself, removed the blindfold to see an empty drawing room. The curtains had been drawn open and there was light pouring in.
The doorbell rang. Her parents had come back. She quickly stood up and shoved the blindfold and the handcuff into an empty drawer nearby. Her parents had purchased some clothes for her from New Market, but she wasn’t interested in trying them out. Making an excuse of missing old times, Rivanah opened all the family photo albums, but found no pictures from her Leh—Ladakh trip. She couldn’t ask her parents about it, now that she was slowly beginning to understand there was indeed something they were hiding from her. In the evening, she called Ishita and told her to keep herself free the next day. They would have to visit Hiya’s place again.
The next day Rivanah accompanied Ishita and Nivan to Hiya’s place in Agarpara. Nivan insisted only Ishita accompany him. Since they didn’t know yet how Rivanah and Hiya were connected, it was better—or so Nivan thought—to keep Rivanah away from Hiya’s parents.
As the two went inside, Rivanah went to a tea stall nearby and waited for them there. They came out after an hour. Rivanah strode across the road to them the moment they came out of Hiya’s house.
‘What happened?’
‘Hiya Chowdhury had a little brother as well,’ Ishita said, gloomily.
‘How is he related to me?’ Rivanah asked, looking at Ishita and then at Nivan.
‘Let’s talk in the car,’ he said.
Ishita sat quietly sitting with Rivanah in the back seat of the car they had com
e in, while Nivan sat beside the driver. They all were silent until Rivanah chose to speak.
‘What happened? What about the little brother?’
‘Hiya’s little brother had some kidney problem for which he needed dialysis. Her father had exhausted every bit of his savings on it, and Hiya’s getting into Tech Sky was their only hope of continuing with the dialysis,’ Nivan said.
‘So that’s why she hanged herself?’ Rivanah asked.
‘We don’t know that yet. Mr Chowdhury showed us the pieces of white cloth Hiya had received, which means the Stranger was behind her as well. Whether he pushed her to hang herself or she did it on her own discretion is hard to say.’
Rivanah knew that any conclusion about the Stranger would be useless. His last words though—the surgery is about to get over soon—sounded dangerously loaded.
‘Now only the third link is left—Mr Dutta,’ Nivan said.
‘Do we approach him today?’ Ishita asked.
‘Today itself,’ Nivan said, and turned to look at Rivanah, ‘Did you do it?’
Before going to bed the previous night, Nivan had asked Rivanah to message Mr Dutta from her father’s phone and fix an appointment somewhere outside, as if it was her father who wanted to meet him. Rivanah did what was asked of her.
‘Mr Dutta will meet my father at 3 p.m. at Mio Amore in Russel Street.’
‘Your father?’ Ishita was surprised.
‘For Mr Dutta, it is my father meeting him,’ Rivanah said. Ishita understood.
They reached Mio Amore before time. Nivan and Ishita took a table, and Rivanah sat at another, with her back to the entrance. Her presence would be announced only when the time was right.
Mr Dutta reached the place shortly after three. He took a table and told the waiter that he was waiting for a friend and would place his order once the friend arrived. Nivan, who kept an eye on every single man entering the place, worked on his instinct as he stood up and went to Mr Dutta.
‘Mr Dutta, isn’t it?’
‘Yes?’ Mr Dutta looked up at Nivan.
‘Hi, I am Nivan.’ He shook hands with him. This was a cue for Ishita to join them.
‘What is this about?’ Mr Dutta asked, feeling slightly uncomfortable.
‘This is about a friend of ours,’ Nivan said, taking a seat and helping Ishita to settle down beside him.
‘Which friend?’
‘Rivanah Bannerjee.’
For a moment, Mr Dutta seemed slightly taken aback but he quickly regained composure.
‘I still don’t understand this.’
‘I’m sure you remember me, uncle?’ It was Rivanah who stood up from the table nearby and joined the lot.
‘We don’t mean any harm,’ Nivan clarified. ‘We just want to know what happened the day Rivanah visited you with her parents.’
‘But I’m not supposed to divulge information related to my patients to anyone,’ Mr Dutta said, and immediately knew he had given a hint already.
‘Patients?’ Rivanah frowned.
‘Mr Dutta, if Rivanah is your patient, then you don’t have the right to hide anything from her, at least. Am I right?’ Nivan said.
Mr Dutta understood they wouldn’t take anything short of the truth. He drank some water from the glass in front of him, and said, ‘Okay, I’ll tell you everything. I knew it had to come out one day. But will you be able to handle it?’ He was looking at Rivanah.
29
‘I don’t have a choice any more, uncle. Nobody can escape their own story, can they?’ Rivanah appeared calm.
Mr Dutta seemed to understand what she meant. All three were waiting for him to speak.
‘Rivanah was brought to me by her parents almost a year and a half ago,’ Mr Dutta said, ‘I could see it in her eyes then that she needed medical treatment. But her parents said they were done with medicine and doctors. Her mother especially was hysterical about losing her daughter. She had heard about me from a distant relative, I think. I calmed her down before focussing on Rivanah. She was acutely restless and seemed like she hadn’t slept in a long time. The kind of profession I’m in, I get all kinds of patients, but looking at Rivanah I realized she was more a victim of acute remorse, more than anything else. At first I had to calm her down to know exactly what the problem was. All she kept repeating was “I killed someone”.’
Rivanah swallowed. She knew Ishita had glanced at her but she was too shocked to return the glance. Nivan was calmly looking at Mr Dutta as the latter continued.
‘I asked her whom have you killed and she took a name—Hiya Chowdhury. Her parents clarified that nothing of that sort had happened. Confused, I took her to my room, my work station, where I induced her into deep sleep through hypnosis.’ Mr Dutta looked at Rivanah and said, ‘I’m a professional hypnotist.’
There was a silence gravid with inquisitiveness.
‘I understand your doubts. Hypnosis may not be talked about much socially, but a lot of people use it in their everyday life. A lot of my patients have used it to forgo labour pain during childbirth. Especially the ones who are adamant to go without a caesarean. Lot of patients also use hypnosis to counter guilt. Though I would agree that there are very few genuine hypnotists left.’
‘What happened next, Mr Dutta?’ Nivan asked.
‘After the induction of deep sleep, Rivanah started talking to me, giving away whatever she had been hiding in her conscious and her subconscious self. I learned that Rivanah and Hiya were fierce competitors in college. In fact, Rivanah told me she’d never accepted it openly, but was actually jealous of Hiya for scoring higher than her in every semester examination. I remember I’d asked you to name one thing which irked you the most about Hiya. And you’d said it was her laughter. You thought it had a mocking tinge to it.’
Rivanah remembered how the Stranger had set Hiya’s laughter as the doorbell sound.
‘Over time, the jealousy turned into a grudge as if Hiya had deliberately scored higher to put Rivanah down—or so Rivanah came to believe. Belief isn’t as simple a thing as we think it is. It can eclipse a lot of things from your sight. Anyway, the year in concern was different, since there were job cuts and economic slowdown all over, and only one IT MNC was scheduled to visit Rivanah’s college campus—Tech Sky. The company was supposed to recruit ten students but not from one college. They were supposed to visit ten colleges and pick one student from each. There were protests against the recruitment manager but all of it came to nothing. Rivanah knew that if they could only select one candidate, it would be Hiya since she was the brightest in her batch. And she had to beat her once and for all to show who the best was.
‘Two nights before, Rivanah bought some over-the-counter sleeping pills, searched on Google for the amount needed to make someone sleep for long but not kill, and experimented on herself. She had the pills at 8.30 p.m. and then woke up around 1 p.m. the next day, having slept like a log throughout. Her plan was convincing and would not raise any doubt. Do we blame someone if we oversleep suddenly one day? It was too casual a thing to seem suspicious—or so she thought. The night before Tech Sky was supposed to visit the college for recruitment, Rivanah was ready to implement her experiment for real.’ Mr Dutta glanced at Rivanah. A teardrop rolled down her cheek. He averted his eyes to Nivan; he knew he wouldn’t be able to continue otherwise.
‘Rivanah called for a group study session to exchange notes at one of their batchmate’s room in the college girl’s hostel. There were four girls in total who met that night in the hostel room: Rivanah, Meera, Hiya and Pooja. The last one was Rivanah’s best friend in college, or so I was told by her parents later. The four girls discussed possible questions for the impending interview until very late in the night, and next morning went to the college for the exam and interview. Except one—Hiya. She didn’t wake up on time and was left behind in the hostel room. And by the time she woke up, Tech Sky had already selected their quota of one candidate from the college: Rivanah Bannerjee.’
Nobody spoke
for a minute. Rivanah had her face half covered with a hand as if she might die if she saw anyone looking at her.
‘What happened to Hiya?’ Ishita asked.
‘Hiya had overslept. Unknown to her, Rivanah had mixed sleeping pills in her coffee the night before; the same number of pills—not enough to kill her but make her sleep longer than desired. Rivanah’s parents told me later that Hiya hanged herself to death. This was the trigger to Rivanah’s emotional breakdown.’
‘And what did you do to Rivanah? How come she never remembered all this?’ Ishita asked.
‘Something which I do only in rare and extreme cases. With deep hypnosis, one can push one’s memories from the conscious to the deep subconscious. Some people call it erasing memory as well, but technically it’s never totally erased. It is there in the subconscious and can manifest itself in the form of dreams.’
And nightmares . . . Rivanah thought but didn’t say anything aloud.
‘Because it’s a part of you. Or sometimes it can also manifest itself in creative endeavours like writing or,’ Mr Dutta glanced at Rivanah and continued, ‘sketching.’
‘You mean the sketches you drew were of . . .’ Ishita said and saw Rivanah nodding gently.
‘This was why your parents brought you to me the last time. They were petrified when they discovered you had sketched Hiya Chowdhury’s face. They feared you would know the truth again and probably go berserk the way you had done for that one month. It was an emotionally taxing time not only for you, but your parents too.’
Forget Me Not, Stranger Page 17