by Durjoy Datta
It’s four-thirty but they know of a place which is open 24 x 7. They catch a cab to the clubbing district, to the place where it isn’t dawn till it is, for the flashy lights of Hong Kong calls out to them.
The grown-ups drink themselves silly that night. Ranbeer drinks like a tanker and forces Sadhika to join in. They hop from one bar to another, dancing like there’s no tomorrow. Only after they have exhausted themselves, they return to their hotel after finding a cab for Sadhika. It’s only Deep who’s still in his senses and Ahana is piggy-backing on his shoulder. He helps Ranbeer to his bed in their suite, and then he makes the bed for Ahana. Ahana wraps her arms around his neck, pulling his face near hers, lips slightly parted.
Deep gently breaks out from her embrace and tells her, ‘I would want you to remember our first kiss together,’ and adds after a second, ‘forever.’
She falls asleep before he can tell her that he has a flight back to New Delhi next morning.
Part Four
The Nerd Boy
28
The aircraft touches down at the Indira Gandhi International Airport, and while I fill up the immigration form, I’m hoping I fill it up wrong and that they send me back to Hong Kong, a place I have come to love so much that I want to be deported from my own country right now. The immigration officer stamps on my passport, and I’m furious at the incompetency of government officials. I had spelt my name wrong. For heaven’s sake, send me back! Send me back!
I didn’t think I would miss Hong Kong as much. I knew my brain would explode because missing Ahana is like dying, only I am living. The pain is almost physical, and as I tread towards the conveyor belt, I’m thinking of the narrow roads, the eighteen-tyre trucks that don’t jam the roads, the tops of the buildings I could never see, the calmness of Tai O, the madness of the pubs and the bars, the sophisticated surroundings of the SoHo district that made me want to dress up in fine clothes and drink wine and dance. I miss being in the city where history is sold in quaint little shops on Hollywood Road, the city that obscures your views about how the old and the new can co-exist and thrive. I miss the food, I miss the energy, and I miss everything I have done in the past few days, which now looks like a montage of pictures from another life.
My suitcase is the last one on the belt, which is okay by me, because as long as I’m in the airport, I can still fly to Hong Kong and hug Ahana and revisit all the places I had with her. And maybe even settle down in one of the huts in Tai O, or nestle on the top floor of a seventy-five-storey building with a view of the harbour. God! I miss her! And I miss Hong Kong!
I walk with my head hung low, and slowly walk towards the exit. There are hundreds of eyes on me, wondering if I am their own, and I’m looking back at them with the same question in my eyes.
‘DEEP!’ Mom shouts as soon as I exit from the Arrivals gate. I walk towards her, as my father tries to hold her steady. With them stand my buddies—Aman and Manasi. Mom is slowly dissolving into tears and she lunges at me like it’s the sudden death of the World Cup final. ‘You have become so weak! You have become so weak!’ she says and caresses my face with her hands and kisses me. She just can’t stop crying.
Manasi leans over and whispers in Mom’s ear, ‘He is alive, Aunty. I told you he’s alive.’
Aman and Dad laugh.
There’s a taxi waiting. Aman is riding shotgun and Mom’s close to me, still crying, still kissing me, and telling me how weak I have become, and Dad’s asking me about how Hong Kong was and I just can’t shut up about it.
‘You and Mom should go some time. It’s great! You will fall in love with that place,’ I am gushing.
Before Dad can respond, Mom interjects, ‘Go to Hong Kong? What will you do here alone? I’m not going anywhere without you. What will you eat?’ And she starts sobbing again. Everyone else is laughing.
‘Fine. Fine. I will come along too. I don’t mind at all!’ I answer.
‘So, Deep,’ Manasi says. ‘Besides work for the library, what else did you do? Did you get inspiration for your book there? Or did you just keep wandering like a lost, homeless boy?’
‘Kind of both, mostly the latter, but I think I can write a trilogy!’ I mock.
I know Aman has been dying to ask me his questions, which I’m certain would revolve around girls and parties, but he stays quiet till the time we reach my house. Nostalgia is a strong feeling, and I feel euphoric as I enter my own room. There’s a sense of calm that flows over me. I’m ecstatic for a few minutes, but after that as I get used to my room again, I’m back to being anxious. I’m wondering if I would ever see her again, and would she remember me, or would she take someone else to all the places we had been to, and let someone else hold her hand, slip his fingers into hers. It sucks.
‘So?’ Aman asks when the three of us are on our own.
‘Yes, yes, there were plenty of hot women and girls all around the city. You will love that place,’ I mock.
‘I know I will love the place, but did you? Did you get lucky?’ he looks at me with his charming, yet totally creepy eyes.
‘If by “lucky” you mean did I find the love of my life? Someone I don’t think I will stop thinking about even when I’m eighty and when you will have herpes and you’re on the death bed hitting on nurses one-third your age, then maybe!’
‘What do you mean I will get herpes?’ Aman protests. ‘I’m like the poster boy of safe sex. Oh! Wait.’
‘Did you just say you fell in love?’ Manasi, who up till now was just gawking at Aman, butts in.
‘Do you want to see pictures?’ I ask and fish out my laptop, not because I want them to see her, but because I want to see her myself.
I click on the Hong Kong folder, which I have backed up on five different online photo-sharing sites, just in case, and there are around thirteen thousand pictures of her.
‘DAMN!’ Aman shrieks.
‘Is that her?’ Manasi asks. ‘You were just stalking her, weren’t you? Tell me you’re stalking her. You can’t be in love with her. She’s gorgeous! She’s like one-third Anne Hathaway, mixed with one-third each of Emma Watson and Jennifer Lawrence. And you’re just a tall Danny De Vito.’
‘This is INSANE,’ Aman butts in. ‘EPIC INSANE.’ You can always count on Aman to make grammatically incorrect phrases sound cool.
‘Hey,’ Manasi notes, ‘why isn’t she looking into the camera in any of the pictures. She is beautiful and everything, but is she, like, also squint?’
‘She’s blind,’ I answer.
Their faces go blank and I wait for them to register the news. They want details. I tell them everything from the first day to the last and looking at the pictures, they piece together a timeline in their heads, and they end up patting me and feeling happy for me.
‘You’re so full of shit, Deep,’ Manasi says. ‘You just fooled a blind girl into falling in love with you. Imagine if she can see you tomorrow. She will run faster than Usain Bolt. Gone in a second!’
‘Oh, shut up,’ Aman argues and puts his arm around my shoulder and squeezes me. ‘Our boy is good-looking, too! I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry and I need to eat,’ he says and leaves the room.
‘Manasi? Do you really think she will leave me when she sees me? If ever?’ I ask nervously.
‘Is there a chance?’
‘There is. She told me once. There’s a gene therapy treatment. It’s long and unreliable, but there’s a chance,’ I tell her.
‘Deep, I know you’re hideous and all, and even if you were the last boy on earth, I wouldn’t consider you, not even for a bit, but you’re a really nice guy. It seems like she genuinely likes you. She has been blind almost all her life. Do you think how you look would matter to her?’ she assures me.
‘I love you,’ I respond.
‘Whatever. What did you get for me?’ she asks. And when I shake my head, she hits me furiously.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I forgive you. You were busy with her. When are you making us meet
her?’ she asks.
‘I wish I knew,’ I answered.
Mom walks into my room and asks us to join Aman on the dining table and we do so, lest she starts crying again.
Manasi whispers in my ear, ‘I want to read the book you write on her if you ever do.’
I nod.
29
It’s been three months since I’ve been back in Delhi, and my life sucks big time with a capital S, capital U, capital C, capital K, capital S. SUCKS. There isn’t a single day when I don’t miss her, and curse myself for not having missed that flight, for not telling her the night before that I was leaving. Maybe they would have woken up from their exhausted slumber and would have seen me off. Maybe it would have made me miss her less, but then again, who am I kidding? I would have only missed her more.
Not that she ever lets me forget her. We talk on the phone day in and day out, but it’s never enough. Nothing can compare to the days I spent walking around, holding her hands, wishing time would stop and lock that moment forever.
‘Dude!’Aman slaps my back as I’m swimming in the watery ketchup of my college canteen, trying to drown my miseries in it. ‘You’re still mourning over her? You spend hours on Skype every day, man. Your longing is worse than a woman’s.’
‘Like seriously, Deep,’ Manasi adds, who has lost quite some weight since the time Aman broke up with his girlfriend. ‘It’s not like she’s dead or something. She’s just blind.’
‘Oh, shut up with your blind jokes!’ I protest. ‘Or on the other hand, can you please keep talking about her. Keep taking her name, too, it’s Ahana. Say it over and over again, till it’s the only sound I can hear.’
‘I would rather die,’ Manasi says and eats a french fry off my plate.
‘If you eat one more of those, I will make sure you do!’ I snap and snatch the plate away from her. She has to stick to her diet.
‘Though I have to admit it, Deep, she’s so pretty,’ Aman points out.
‘Are you telling me? I KNOW THAT!’ I retort.
‘God!’Manasi exclaims. ‘It’s like you’ve been PMSing for the last three months!’
‘That reminds me of her,’ I say. ‘She once said that being blind is like PMSing for a lifetime.’
‘Enough,’ Manasi puts her foot down. ‘I don’t have time for this lovelorn Romeo. I have a class to attend. Are you coming, Aman?’
‘Right behind you,’ he says.
There’s a definite change in the power balance between Aman and Manasi. Aman, the college stud, strangely acquiesces to every demand put forward by Manasi, but I have no time to think about them. I have to mourn the distance between Ahana and me and be insecure about the boys around her.
I sleep through IT Architecture, Advanced JAVA and C++, as I travel back to Hong Kong, to its brightly lit streets, walking past the billboards of every fashion brand conceivable, dodging well-dressed men and women, clutching Ahana’s hand tightly in mine . . . she’s tapping my shoulder and saying, ‘Deep, Deep, Deep. Wake up. Wake up.’
Wake up? Wake up?
I wake up with a start and I’m sure I have gone crazy because what I see can’t be true. She’s right there, sitting next to me, looking towards at me, but not quite, smiling, and just sitting like she’s not the love of my life.
‘Wh . . . wh . . . what are you doing here?’
‘Shouldn’t I be asking you the same question? You should be in class,’ she says, her eyes full of mischief.
‘How are you here? How did you find me?’
‘Don’t worry. I’m sure Dad is looking at us from his viewfinder from the top of a nearby building,’ she laughs.
‘Can I like, hug you?’
‘I would if you don’t!’ she shrieks and we hug and my eyes fill up and she just goes ‘Awww!’
‘What took you so long? It took you three months to come and meet me?’ I growl.
‘At least I’m not like you, going away unannounced, the very day I wanted to tell you how much I loved you!’ she retorts, still looking at my eyes, which is strange.
‘I’m so sorry!’ I say. ‘But believe me, I have had the temptation to sell off books from my father’s library and buy the first ticket to Hong Kong. God! I missed you.’ I hug her again.
‘I missed you more. There wasn’t a single second when I didn’t think about you,’ she purrs.
‘But I’m still angry. It took you three months to come and see me. That’s just cruel!’ I grumble.
‘I was busy,’ she argues.
‘Busy doing what? Learning to make clicking sounds like your ex-boyfriend!’
‘Can you stop being jealous of him for, like, one second, Deep?’ she asks, but she also smiles, which I don’t miss.
‘So what were you busy with?’ I ask.
‘I was busy relearning all the things I had unlearned,’ she says.
‘Stop with the riddles.’
‘I was busy looking at our pictures,’ she explains.
‘Looking at our pictures?’ I smirk. ‘They come in Braille now?’
‘Oh, stop being an ass. I mean real pictures,’ she says. ‘That’s what people who can see get clicked for, right? So that they can look at their pictures later?’
‘I don’t get you,’ I snap irritably. ‘You’ve got to stop being cryptic. It takes away your cuteness.’
‘The treatment I told you about? Where they had to dig through my optic nerve and cut close to my brain and shift a few things here and there, well, it worked a little. It was a pretty badass surgery and I was brave as hell during it. Even Dad agrees. I can see a little now, Deep.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘I’m saying that I can see how cute you are, I can see that you’re tall, a little too tall for me, but I will make do. I’m saying that I can see how your face resembles like that of a puppy when you look at me, something that Dad always told me, and I can see that I’m hopelessly, irrevocably in love with you,’ she says.
‘Umm . . . you can see me?’ I ask, my eyes widen, my brain processes what it saw in the mirror this morning.
‘Not clearly. I have these big glasses I have to wear to see clearly, but I can make out your silhouette,’ she explains.
‘Wear your glasses!’ I tell her and she puts on her black-rimmed nerdy glasses, and she looks like a really cute kindergarten teacher.
‘You’re so out of my league now!’ I protest. ‘Your blindness is all that was in my favour.’
‘Now that I can see you, I think I like you better,’ she replies.
‘I don’t believe girls who can see. They often lie.’ I take her glasses off. ‘This is much better. You will always be a midnight girl in my book, blind as a bat.’
‘Are you writing it?’
‘I just finished the first bit. It’s set in my favourite city, Hong Kong, and my favourite person is in it,’ I answer.
‘I will not try to guess who that favourite person is,’ she responds and adds after a pause, ‘Can I now get my kiss that I’m supposed to remember forever?’
‘Here?’ I ask nervously, looking around.
‘Looks like a good place for a forever to start,’ she says and leans into me.
Our lips touch, and it feels like death, it feels like life, it feels like the streets of Hong Kong, it feels like the lights, the skyscrapers, like the touch of her hands, like the despair of a helpless girl, like the happiness of reading, it feels like everything; and from the corner of my eye, I can see her dad, watching and smiling. Without a gun in his hand, but instead, a smiling Sadhika by his side.
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