Marry Me, Stranger

by Novoneel Chakraborty

  Ekansh brought his sling bag and kept it over his lap so that it would cover her hand when it slid inside his pant. Rivanah turned to look at the bag once and then at him. The next instant, she slowly slid her right hand under the bag, unzipped his jeans, and grabbed his hard penis. She had felt it after months. Slowly she started jerking it looking around with an amused expression. Nobody had a clue what was going on. Ekansh laid his head back in bliss. Then she pinched the top and he shrieked out. The few passengers at the other end of the compartment gave them a nonchalant look. Rivanah already had a naughty smile on her face as she jerked it with more force. Ekansh came within two minutes.

  ‘Give me something to clean up,’ she whispered. Ekansh gave her his handkerchief. She cleaned up with a face that was ready to burst out into laughter.

  Someone on the opposite side of the train’s compartment smiled looking at them. Neither Rivanah nor Ekansh knew that the person had ordered the same food which they did in Bade Miyan, had sat on the same cemented barricade of Marine Drive some distance away from them, and had bought the same flavoured ice cream which they did from Baskin and Robbins.

  When Rivanah moved inside her sister’s flat using the spare key she had given her on the first day itself, she received a message on her phone from her own number like she had a few nights ago.

  You have a month’s time to learn to cook Spanish Omelette, Kadhai Paneer, and Butter Chicken for yourself.

  It wasn’t funny anymore. She messaged back:

  What? Who are you?

  The reply came instantly:

  Else I’ll make you cry.

  A deep frown appeared on Rivanah’s face. She re-read the first message. All the three mentioned dishes were her favourite. On a hunch, she messaged back:

  Is that you Prateek?

  The reply came after a good one minute.

  LOL.

  5

  Rivanah’s team in office consisted of three men and herself. Her team lead was Sridhar Ram who was the most amicable man she had ever met. In the morning, he would tell all his team members what his expectations were of them and added that his only concern was if they did their work well. If they were able to do so before office time, they were free to use the residual time to their liking and he would save their asses in case senior management probed about it. Making time flexible for an employee, Sridhar believed, increased the overall productivity. But every person has a flaw and Rivanah soon realized Sridhar’s flaw was he would never look her in the eyes while talking to her. It was always her breasts as if they had a mouth of their own. It made her feel uncomfortable and irritated, and she wanted to complain to her teammates but couldn’t since they themselves were a weird bunch. Bijoy was a porn addict who would watch dirty videos on the office computer and forget to minimize the window whenever Rivanah approached him. Somehow he scared her and she maintained a safe distance from him. Shantanu was someone who would give her furtive glances all the time but rarely spoke to her directly. And Rohit always stared at her in a way that made her feel naked, even if she was covered from top to bottom.

  The office canteen didn’t have quality food, and Rivanah knew she would have to get food from home. But she was done with the maid’s dull stuff that her sister and her husband had developed a taste for. And cooking didn’t interest her, or so she thought, so it was out of question. While munching the somewhat stale burger in the canteen, she wondered about the message she had received asking her to learn to cook else the person would make her cry. How audacious! Cook, my foot! Out of sheer angst, she had deleted the message immediately after reading.

  She knew that if the situation peaked to another level other than the messages, she would have to involve Ekansh and do something about it.

  After she came to her desk post lunch, she found some fresh red roses waiting for her. She counted them: twelve. It was her birth date. She immediately called Ekansh.

  ‘Thank you mister. You really caught me unprepared.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘The twelve roses.’

  ‘Which roses?’

  Rivanah was quiet for a moment. She looked at the roses and then heard him say, ‘What are you talking about?’ Ekansh genuinely sounded like he knew nothing about it.

  ‘Oh, nothing. I was kidding,’ she said feeling an irk brewing in her. She talked to him causally for another minute and then ended the call. Before she could hide the roses inside her desk drawer, her team lead, Sridhar, immediately asked, ‘Hey, is it your birthday?’ He was looking at her breasts.

  ‘No,’ she said picking up the roses without caring to look at him.

  ‘Then? Boyfriend?’

  Rivanah nodded with an uninterested smile and brought the roses close to her to inspect them. The fragrance was strong. She kept the entire bunch inside one of the drawers and resumed working. An hour later, Prateek pinged her on the office messenger:

  Hi! You there?

  At first Rivanah thought she would not reply. She was committed and there was no point giving air to the friendship that Prateek was covertly seeking since she was confident he would interpret her friendliness for love. Then another message popped up from him and she had to reply. If she didn’t, she knew this passive wooing would continue.

  Did you like the roses?

  He knew she had a boyfriend so what was he doing sending her red roses? Did he believe she could still be lured? A sudden rage filled within her. She could have punched Prateek in the face if he was there in front of her. She took a deep breath, relaxed herself, and then typed on the messenger chat window:

  Please meet me at the smoking zone NOW.

  ‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ she told Sridhar and moved out of her cubicle.

  The smoking zone was not an official smoking zone but an open extension to the office space where people would smoke and indulge in casual and sometimes—as the office lingo went—tharki talk. Prateek joined her after two minutes.

  ‘I don’t want to be rude Prateek, but you are not going to send me any more roses, okay?’

  ‘Why? What happened? You don’t like roses?’ Prateek looked around nervously for once. There weren’t many people around.

  ‘I like a lot of things, but that doesn’t mean you will gift the mall to me.’

  ‘What’s wrong with gifts?’

  ‘Wrong? There’s nothing right in it,’ Rivanah said helplessly. ‘I told you I have a boyfriend.’

  ‘So? Just because you have a boyfriend doesn’t mean I can’t gift you something? I’m not asking you to leave him. I only sent you simple, harmless, and fresh smelling roses.’

  ‘I don’t appreciate all this,’ Rivanah said and dashed back to her place.

  In the evening Prateek pinged her on the office messenger again.

  I’m sorry, Rivanah. Don’t be angry with me.

  Rivanah was talking to Ekansh on the phone when she saw the message. Once her phone call ended, she read the message again. She knew she couldn’t be too rude with him.

  I’m not angry with you. And it’s okay. I’m happy you understood what I meant.

  You are happy, I’m happy. So, coffee after office?

  An irritated Rivanah logged out of the office messenger. While moving out of the office in the evening, she stopped by the office’s main gate. Prateek was standing there with two paper glasses of coffee.

  ‘What’s this, Prateek?’

  ‘Coffee. I asked you on the messenger and you...’

  ‘I logged out.’

  ‘Yes. So I thought you are okay with coffee. We can sit and have it in the office premises itself if you have a problem going out with me.’

  The guy was slowly getting on her nerves now. She was all too glad she had rejected his proposal in school or else by now she would have either killed him or admitted herself to a mental asylum.

  ‘Okay, let’s have coffee.’ She wanted to be done with it. ‘But Prateek, you have to promise me something.’

  ‘Anything!’

>   ‘You won’t do something for me unless I request you to do so.’

  He gave her a long stare.

  ‘Say something,’ she urged.

  ‘I was waiting for you to request me to talk.’

  ‘Very funny! Come now.’ They stood at a corner inside the office premises with Prateek who kept talking endlessly while Rivanah did her best to sip off the hot coffee as quickly as she could. Finally, she took an autorickshaw and went home. On her way back, she tried calling Ekansh up but his line would always be busy. So she called one of her close friends from college, Pooja Haldar, who had been placed in a software MNC in Hyderabad. Pooja was the gossip queen of their batch and talking to her was always fun.

  The autorickshaw dropped Rivanah right in front of Vishnu Dham. She walked in and took the elevator, still chirping on phone with Pooja. Once the elevator ascended, the call disconnected abruptly because there was no network reception. Rivanah was about to unplug her phone’s ear piece when the elevator suddenly stopped a little above the second floor. There was darkness inside the elevator. Rivanah tried but could see nothing through the elevator gate either. She understood it had to be a power cut.

  ‘Hello, anyone there? Hello?’ Rivanah said raising her voice. Her eyes were slowly getting used to the dark but she could still see nothing except for the elevator switchboard. Suddenly she heard footsteps coming toward her. The security guard? she thought and said, ‘Excuse me, I’m stuck here. Could you please get someone to turn on the generator?’

  The footsteps stopped as a response. She thought the person might have gone looking for where the generator was. She waited impatiently, wiping the sweat drops off her forehead with her handkerchief. With every passing second she felt the elevator doors were closing in on her in the dark. Then there was a loud noise, as someone kicked the elevator gate hard. Rivanah shrieked out in fear.

  ‘Who is this?’ she said in a fragile tone. Nothing happened. Her short, jittery breath could now inhale a certain fragrance. She could tell it was a deodorant but didn’t know which one. She hastily tried switching on the flashlight of her phone. The moment she held it in front of the collapsible gate of the elevator, there was another kick on it. This one was stronger than the earlier one. A nervous Rivanah lost her grip on her phone and it fell.

  ‘Please don’t do this,’ she pleaded trying to bend down to retrieve her phone. Someone now held the elevator gate and shook it hard. Rivanah started shaking in fear and sweating profusely.

  ‘Please!’ she somehow muttered.

  Silence. The power came on and the elevator started moving up again. Rivanah felt her muscles relaxing slowly. She tried to look through the gate but there was nobody. Instead, she noticed a white piece of cloth lying on the elevator floor. She picked it up. It was similar to the cloth she had found in the cab on her first day in Mumbai. She flipped the cloth and found something stitched on it in black thread:

  28 more days: learn to cook or learn to cry.

  ‘What the fuck is this?’ As the elevator stopped on her floor, she quickly opened the gates. She climbed down the stairs as fast as she could and went rushing to the security guard who was smoking by the building entrance.

  ‘Bhaiya, did you see anyone enter or leave the building right now?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Were you here all the time?’

  ‘I only went to switch on the generator madam. But the power is back now.’

  ‘Why did you leave the gate?’ she said rather annoyingly.

  The security guard gave her an incredulous look and said, ‘Who would switch on the generator then?’

  Rivanah trotted back into the building, holding onto the piece of white cloth. This time she took the stairs to reach Meghna’s third floor flat. When she reached, she saw that taped on the door was another piece of white cloth with words stitched in black:

  Know your worth Mini.

  6

  ‘I received a message from a phone number identical to mine when I came to Mumbai.’

  Rivanah was on Skype chat with Ekansh. Meghna and Aadil, for the first time since her arrival, had gone out together to one of Meghna’s friend’s wedding in Thane. And it was the right time for Rivanah to catch up with her boyfriend.

  ‘What do you mean? Who is it?’ Ekansh said, concerned, and thought for a moment before adding, ‘Is this why you asked me about the duplicate SIM?’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Rivanah nodded.

  ‘What did the message say?’

  Rivanah thought for a moment and said, ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘It said something like get ready.’ She wanted to tell him about the elevator incident too but she could see how worried he already looked. She didn’t want him to skip office and fly down once again to Mumbai for something even she wasn’t sure about.

  ‘What? That’s absurd. Listen, why aren’t you getting a new local number?’

  ‘I have applied for a corporate connection. I’ll get it in a day or two. I will stop using the Kolkata number then.’

  ‘Just break that SIM card, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  The call got disconnected, so Ekansh called her again.

  ‘Babu, will you like it if I cook for you?’ she said projecting a puppy-faced expression.

  Ekansh came close to the cam and said, ‘Can you pinch yourself?’ He knew what a disaster she was in the kitchen and also how much she hated to cook. All her life she had only prepared a boiled egg. Once.

  ‘Dhat! Tell me honestly. Will you like it if I cook for you the next time we are together?’

  ‘Which guy won’t like it if his girl cooks for him? It’s a major turn-on for any average Indian guy.’

  ‘Is it? Why didn’t you tell me this before?’

  ‘I knew how much you hated cooking. But there’s no need to cook.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘When we’ll be together, I don’t want you to waste time in the kitchen. I would rather want you to do something useful with me in the bedroom.’

  ‘You are incorrigible!’ she said and blushed.

  ‘Please don’t blush like that. I can’t afford a hard-on when I’m alone.’

  ‘Shut up!’ she said turning a darker shade of red. ‘I love you.’

  At the back of her mind, the elevator incident had shaken her up a bit. She wanted to take the message seriously. But now, with Ekansh telling her it wasn’t important for him if she knew how to cook, the message and the sender stopped mattering. But she also promised herself that one more threatening incident and she would tell Ekansh everything honestly.

  ‘Hello!’ Ekansh said waving his hand and trying to break her trance. Rivanah was about to speak up when the doorbell rang. She immediately cut the Skype call, shut her laptop screen, and went to open the door. It was Meghna and Aadil. The latter was drunk and both were shouting at the top of their voices.

  ‘So what if I shook hands with him? I’m not sleeping with him like you do with your colleagues. Do you think I don’t know about it?’ Meghna said with a pitch that Rivanah was now somewhat used to.

  ‘What happened di?’ she asked with a dry throat. She had heard them fighting a couple of times more but this was the first time she had said something.

  ‘Stay out of it, Mini,’ Meghna roared and walked inside the bedroom. Aadil followed her. Rivanah shut the door quickly. Inside the bedroom, a two-hour long blame game began, with abuses galore. Rivanah thought there would begin a fist fight any moment but thankfully nothing of that sort happened. She couldn’t sleep that night and kept exchanging messages with Ekansh over the phone. It was one thing when an arranged marriage went wrong but when a love marriage goes flat like Meghna’s and Aadil’s, Rivanah thought, it makes the entire institution of marriage sound scary and loathsome.

  We will never fight, okay? she messaged Ekansh once the fight in the bedroom subsided.

  Of course we won’t. Fights happen when there’s misunderstandings or if one takes the
other for granted. We won’t do either of the two, Ekansh responded.

  I have seen Meghna di and Aadil da go against the entire family for their love and now they are fighting with each other all the time. Where’s that love that made them leave their family?

  Relationships do change with time dear, Ekansh messaged back.

  I know and that’s why I’m scared. Please don’t ever change, Ekansh. I won’t be able to take it. I love you too much.

  I love you too much as well.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t the only night that Meghna and Aadil fought. Almost every alternate day they would end up fighting over trivial issues but the accusations were serious and most of the time forthright cheap. Soon Rivanah concluded that perhaps both Meghna and Aadil knew the relationship was over but were too afraid to acknowledge it because they were each other’s choice to begin with. Rivanah shared her conclusion with Ekansh one night after installing Whatsapp on her new local phone number.

  I agree, replied Ekansh.

  Maybe neither wants to take the blame for the break up since they both are to be blamed for the relationship anyway.

  Jesus. What happened to you? You suddenly sound so mature!

  Rivanah sent him an angel’s emoticon.

  On a serious note Ekansh, their fights are simply getting on my nerves now.

  It wasn’t only her cousin and her husband who were getting to her. The office had seemed exciting at first, but within a fortnight, the thought of going to office and working in the cubicle where she had to grind herself all day made her cringe. At night she came home feeling weak and exhausted. The food cooked by the maid was so repulsive that many a times she skipped dinner or simply drank a glass of milk and slept. Weekends were worse. Ekansh was in Bengaluru while she had no friends to hang out with in Mumbai. Prateek was there but she kept avoiding him, citing one excuse or the other. If she stayed back at home, there was her sister and brother-in-law to make life miserable for her. She preferred to sleep than join them for a movie or dinner outside because she knew peace would eventually be a far cry with them around. Once, during a dinner at a restaurant, Aadil ended up fighting with the waiter only because his idea of a Peking Soup was different from what the restaurant served him. When Meghna tried to calm him down, the fight steered direction ruining the evening all together.