THE ONE YOU CANNOT HAVE

by Preeti Shenoy

  westland ltd

  Apart from being a best-selling author, Preeti Shenoy is also an artist, specialising in portraits. She has given talks at many prestigious educational institutions, across the country, including IITs and IIMs. She is an avid blogger, poet, nature-lover and yoga buff. A few things that give her immense joy, apart from writing, are fitness, travelling to new places and spending time with her family and her dog.

  Preeti Shenoy is currently based in Bangalore, India. To know more about her, go to preetishenoy.com. Follow her on twitter @preetishenoy

  westland ltd

  61 Silverline Building, 2nd Floor, Alapakkam Main Road, Maduravoyal, Chennai 6000 095

  No. 38/10 (New No.5), Raghava Nagar, New Timber Yard Layout, Bangalore 560 026

  93, 1st Floor, Sham Lal Road, New Delhi 110 002

  First published by westland ltd 2013

  First e-book edition: 2013

  Copyright © Preeti Shenoy 2013

  All rights reserved

  ISBN:

  Typeset by Ram Das Lal

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or

  otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, circulated, and no reproduction in any

  form, in whole or in part (except for brief quotations in critical articles

  or reviews) may be made without written permission of the publishers.

  For Satish, Atul and Purvi, as always.

  And for Manu too.

  What happens to a dream deferred?

  Does it dry up

  like a raisin in the sun?

  Or fester like a sore

  And then run?

  Does it stink like rotten meat?

  Or crust and sugar over

  like a syrupy sweet?

  Maybe it just sags

  like a heavy load.

  Or does it explode?

  – Langston Hughes

  Chapter 1

  Aman

  Uprooting oneself is never easy and now that the final moment has come, I find myself unprepared.

  I don’t think Mark even realises the emptiness I feel inside me.

  ‘All set, Aman? You must be looking forward to moving back to India then?’ he says, as he sinks into the plush leather sofa and reaches for a can of beer.

  I look at the bare walls where the Madhubhani paintings I had got from India had hung and I examine the holes left by the nails. Mark and I had hammered them into the wall, two years ago, when I had moved into this flat. The nails yanked out by Mark lie on the floor now.

  ‘You know, in India, we don’t have to do stuff like this,’ I reply, avoiding his question, concentrating instead on the task at hand. I take out the tube of wall-filler bought at Thorns, the best store in Norwich for all such things. I look at it. ‘Flexible filler decorator. For sealing and filling gaps and cracks before decorating,’ it reads. I squeeze out the required amount of the sealant carefully and fill the two holes in the wall. I add finishing touches to my repair work and stand back to admire it. Now it only needs a coat of paint.

  ‘That’s right. I know. And in India, you lead the life of a maharaja with four servants to do your bidding,’ replies Mark as he takes a swig of beer, resting his leg on the coffee table.

  ‘Well, not four servants. But at least we can afford to hire people to do our laundry and we don’t have clauses in our rental agreements which force one to fill holes like this,’ I reply.

  Mark chuckles. ‘Filling holes ain’t so bad, eh?’ he drawls trying to do an Australian accent, but failing miserably and sounding very much English.

  ‘Depends on which ones,’ I retort and we both laugh, our laughter abating my feelings somewhat.

  I clear up all the nails and sweep up the dust on the floor. Mark adds a second coat of paint to my patch-work on the wall.

  ‘It looks as good as new,’ I tell him. And it does.

  ‘Hmmm. You know, Aman, I was thinking of planning a trip to India once you’re settled there,’ he says.

  ‘You must, Mark. India is a fantastic place. It has beaches, mountains, hills, tons of culture—you name it,’ I reply.

  ‘If I come, will you introduce me to some nice Indian girls?’

  ‘I do not know any “nice” Indian girls, Mark,’ I say.

  And then, almost immediately, I think of Anjali.

  She has been emailing me a lot recently. I am not sure what she wants from me. After Shruti, I am wary of getting close to anybody. And the last thing I want is a long-distance relationship. Or any relationship for that matter. I am happy to be immersed in my work. I don’t want to give Anjali any false hope.

  Women are funny that way—you respond politely to them and they presume you are interested. I have tried to be as casual as possible in my erratic replies to her. It is as much of a red flag as I can wave. But Anjali refuses to back down and though it bothers me a little, it doesn’t bother me enough to be overly concerned or worried about her advances, if they can be so termed.

  ‘No? Not even one? Really?’ Mark looks incredulous.

  ‘Just wait until Eva hears this. I will tell her about your secret agenda to visit India,’ I wink.

  ‘Don’t even joke about it. She will never let me visit you then,’ he says, his face instantly changing its expression and his grey-green eyes narrowing. He runs his hand through his blond hair worriedly.

  I don’t want to mention Anjali to Mark. He would never understand.

  Mark has only two goals when it comes to women.

  One, to get them to bed on the first date and two, to get them to bed on any date. Mark is about 6 ft 1’ and muscular to boot. He has the kind of body that can make it to the cover of a men’s fitness magazine. He works out thrice a week and plays football with the boys twice a week. He is very conscious of his appearance, and with his kind of looks and charm, he is popular with women.

  In the three years that I have known him (I had known him before I moved to the UK as we had worked on some projects together), he has slept with at least eight women, even while having a steady relationship with Eva. Initially, I had found it very odd, my moral compass being at variance with Mark’s.

  Friday nights are, by default, music night at a local pub. Mark and the others in my department (all English, I am the only Indian) have a routine they do on these pub visits. They call it ‘pulling’. This basically means attracting women and charming them enough to get them to go to bed with them. When they had first mentioned to me that they would be out at the pub ‘pulling’, I had asked ‘Pulling what?’ at which they had all burst into laughter.

  Later I had learnt the subtle differences between the slang used by the British and the kind used back in India. In the UK, shagging meant having sex, while in India, it meant pleasuring yourself. They had other, amusing terms for that: ‘buffing the banana’, ‘applying the handbrake’, ‘teasing the weasel’ and the most hilarious one—‘rounding up the tadpoles’. It had taken me only a very brief while to get used to their accents, customs and usages and now, after two years, I feel right at home in Norwich with Mark and my other English friends.

  ‘So, let us do the final recce then, eh? Do you have the list?’ asks Mark.

  I take out the rental agreement the real estate agent had given me when I had moved in. In the UK, unlike in India, they are very meticulous about property. The realtor had, along with me, examined each and every mark on the wall, noted each detail on the list that she had carried.

  ‘Crack on wall in foyer, small mark on wall facing the garden in the hall, dent
on boiler,’ the list went on, making a precise note on the shape and condition of the property. At the time of handing back a property, the agent would compare it against this list. Any deviations would have to be taken care of by me. This was why I was so careful about repairing the holes left by nails. I do not want to shell out my hard-earned pounds towards damage to property. In the two years that I have worked here, I have saved up quite a bit and have a comfortable nest egg with which I intend buying an apartment in India. I don’t want anything, especially the cost of repair, to make a dent in my plans.

  Mark and I compare everything that is on the list.

  ‘So, all done then. I think we are handing it back to them in a better shape than it was in when we rented it,’ comments Mark. And I realise it is true.

  Habits formed in childhood die hard and I have been meticulous about housekeeping from an early age. Baba passed away when I was seven and since then my mother raised me singlehandedly. As a child, I would feel miserable seeing her struggle to make both ends meet, and to help her out, I would tidy up the home before she came back from work. I wanted to make her life a little easier. Ever since I have told her I am moving back, she is over the moon even though I am relocating to Bangalore, not Gwalior where she lives.

  Mark carries my suitcases to his car and puts them in the boot. There are a few formalities to be taken care of at work before I move to India and I will be spending the last two days of my stay in the UK at a hotel close to office.

  ‘Let me shut down the heating and then we shall lock up and hand over the keys,’ I say, as I dash upstairs to the boiler room. All homes in the UK have a central heating system which comprises a huge metallic boiler housed in a ‘boiler room’. One can control the temperature, the settings and other things here. One would freeze to death without the heating.

  When I turn off the boiler switch, I notice that the latch to the attic has come loose. The door, which is on the roof, has swung downwards and is open.

  I am not tall enough to reach it without a ladder, so I call out to Mark.

  ‘Hey, Mark, just come and shut this attic door for me, will you?’ I peep out of the window on the first floor and call out to him.

  Mark bounds up the stairs.

  He reaches the door easily and pushes it back against the roof but finds something obstructing it.

  He tries once more with the same result.

  ‘Get me something I can stand on. There seems to be something up there,’ he says.

  ‘I called you because I felt too lazy to go to the garage and get the ladder and now you want me to get it,’ I grumble.

  ‘It is up to you. Shall we just leave it then?’

  ‘No, wait, I’ll get it,’ I say. I rush downstairs to the garage, unlock it and carry the ladder up the stairs.

  Mark climbs up and I hold the ladder steady.

  From up there he says, ‘Hey, there seems to be a suitcase up here.’ As he takes it down, its clasp opens and the contents tumble out.

  I freeze. I had forgotten all about this suitcase. I had shoved it up in the attic when I had first moved here.

  It feels as though someone has punched me in the gut. I try to open my mouth but no words come out. My heart beats frantically. My hands go cold.

  It is funny what memories can do to you. How they can grip you by the throat, choke you, strangle you. And just when you thought you had it all sorted, too.

  Mark looks at me questioningly.

  And finally I say, ‘Fuck,’ as I look at the contents of the suitcase now scattered on the floor.

  Chapter 2

  Shruti

  ‘It would be nice to spend Diwali with my folks, like last year,’ declares Rishabh as he enters the flat and throws down his laptop bag in the drawing room, on the carpet, like he always does.

  It irks me today though, how casually he does it. I have told him several times that I don’t want that bag in the middle of the drawing room. Can’t he see how house-proud I am, for God’s sake? And how well I have done up the apartment? Our apartment is tiny (all of 900 square feet), which is supposedly ‘okay’ by Mumbai standards. For a person who has spent all her life in Bangalore and has grown up in a large bungalow, this 900-square-foot matchbox is hard to get used to. Whenever I complain that we do not have enough space, Rishabh never fails to remind me that we live in Lokhandwala Complex in Andheri, which supposedly is one of the nicer suburbs.

  ‘Rishabh—please don’t throw your bag down on the carpet. How can you just leave it in the middle of the room like that? How many times do I have to remind you?’ I am annoyed now. His bag is such an eyesore. But he is oblivious to how out-of-place it looks.

  ‘Sorry, baby. I forgot. I will take it inside later,’ he says as he switches on the TV and flips channels.

  I sit beside him, my eyes still on the bag. I wait for him to pick it up, my irritation growing with each minute. But Rishabh shows no signs of budging.

  ‘Do we have orange juice? Get me some, na,’ he says as he slumps further into the sofa, fully engrossed in a cricket match now, which is a replay of a test match between India and Australia. What men find fascinating in a match of which you already know the results, I don’t know. And now he wants me to get him orange juice too.

  I grit my teeth and do not respond.

  He looks at me and realises I am angry.

  ‘Arey—why do you always make a fuss? I will put it away when I get up. I told you, right.’

  ‘You never do. It always lies there till I put it away.’

  ‘That is because you put it away before I get up. You never give me a chance.’

  ‘I like the house clean. Look how well I have done it up.’

  I have picked blue and white linen curtains. They contrast beautifully with the white futon and cream sofas that one can sink into. The carpet from Fab India is sea-blue and it goes well with the curtains. The whole effect is modern, plush, comfortable and luxurious, giving the room the illusion of spaciousness. And there is Rishabh’s ugly bag right in the middle of it all.

  I cannot bear the sight of it anymore. I jump up and carry his bag and place it inside the closet in the spare room which doubles as a guest bedroom, which is where he should have

  kept it in the first place.

  ‘See? You never give me a chance. I would have taken it,’ he says, amused.

  I don’t smile back. I go to the fridge and pour the juice and hand it over to him.

  ‘You are such a sweetheart. I love you, baby,’ he says as he pulls me towards him and motions for me to sit in his lap. I sit next to him and find my anger slowly dissipating. It is hard to be angry with Rishabh for long. He is an amiable guy, most of the time. He doesn’t get ruffled like me. I tend to flare up in an instant but I also cool down very fast. Rishabh, however, is always calm.

  In the time that we have been married, he has lost his temper only once. It was with his office colleague. Then, too, he had not raised his voice. Just the steel in his voice and his ice-calm manner as he expressed exactly what he felt without mincing words, had given me the jitters.

  Rishabh puts his right arm over my shoulders and draws me to him, as he holds his juice in the other hand and sips it. I am bored with cricket and I want to flip channels. His mobile rings and when he mutes the television to answer it, I get the perfect opportunity to flip to my favourite music channel.

  ‘Yeah—schedule it for tomorrow. Noon. In the morning I am meeting two others,’ I hear him say on the phone. ‘And is that a he or a she?’ he asks. He listens to the reply. ‘Oh yes, I had presumed Aman is a guy, but I had a doubt as I thought you said “she”. Anyway I will see her tomorrow,’ he says as he hangs up.

  I have frozen on hearing the name Aman. I don’t even notice when Rishabh grabs the remote from my hand and changes the channel back to the cricket match.

  The name Aman still ha
s the power to set my heart racing and give me goosebumps. I have a hundred thousand memories associated with Aman. Indelible memories. After all, four years of one’s life is considerable time to spend with someone and even today, after nearly two years of my marriage to Rishabh, it takes little to trigger memories of our time together.

  I think of how when I would make the morning coffee, I would text Aman nonstop. I would go on till the buzzing phone woke him and he replied to me. I think of the silly little code words we had which made sense only to both of us. I think of how I had teased him about his name. I had told him that he was just A-man. He had replied that for me he might have been just A-man, but for him, I was his whole world. I had kissed him then. He had held me that day, as it rained outside and we had sat listening to the sound of raindrops on the window panes. I think of what an impossibly wonderful relationship it was. Suddenly, without warning, I am filled with a deep sense of longing. A sense of loss. A sense of despondency and helplessness.

  And even though my husband’s arms are around me and I am resting my head on his shoulders, as he absently strokes my hair, his brow knitted in deep concentration watching his cricket, I realise I am a thousand miles away. I am in a different place. I am in a time when nothing mattered to me except Aman.

  I continue sitting there with Rishabh till he asks me if I have made dinner or whether he should order Chinese takeaway, his favourite meal. It takes me a few minutes to comprehend his query.

  Finally, I tell him to choose and we end up walking up to a restaurant nearby called Wang’s Kitchen. The main road near Lokhandwala has a lot of eateries and we are spoilt for choice.

  I have to force myself to concentrate on what Rishabh is saying during the meal. He tells me that he is expanding his team and is conducting interviews to hire a new person. I am glad that he loves his job at Club Happiness, a holiday and resorts company. His rise in his workplace has been meteoric, and he now has a team of six people working under him. He tells me that he has scheduled three interviews for tomorrow.