‘I’ll make it work,’ she said in an unconvincing manner. Before Abhiraj could respond, their parents joined them laughing aloud on some archaic joke.
The dinner went well with the parents discussing IPL, politics, and the new Rajarhat housing projects. While walking them up to the gate after dinner, Abhiraj asked, ‘May I now have your phone number please?’
Rivanah had already denied him that luxury.
‘I think I…’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll tell my parents to look for someone else but can we be friends at least?’
Abhiraj seemed to mean what he said. She exchanged phone numbers with him before the Mukherjee family left.
At night, she talked with Danny for a long time since her arrival in Kolkata. She wanted to distract herself from Abhiraj’s words: Danny won’t be yours. It injured her. She sounded happy to Danny on the phone but inside her there was a storm raging. It didn’t stop even after talking to Danny. Soon she found herself typing a message to the stranger:
What to do when you are in love with the journey but at the same time scared of the undesirable destination which you know is going to arrive sooner or later?
A response came after half an hour:
If you are really in love, then no destination should scare you.
Rivanah read the line over and over again. Each time, it renewed her confidence in her relationship with Danny. She was happy to have asked for the stranger’s advice.
Have you ever been in love? she messaged.
It’s impossible to go through life without being in love, the stranger messaged back.
What is love for you? she asked.
Love is when someone else protects you from your own self.
Rivanah couldn’t understand what the message exactly meant.
What do you mean?
Each one of us is our own worst enemy. Every moment we harm ourselves; sometimes through the choices we make and at times with the ones we don’t. It’s a continuous process of emotional and spiritual corruption. And love is when the God in someone heals us from the hurt that the devil in us caused.
The profundity of the statement was now clear to Rivanah. She was lost in thoughts when her phone beeped again.
I too have a question for you: when was the last time you made a mistake, Mini? A terrible, terrible mistake.
Rivanah thought hard for some time and typed:
Trusting Ekansh was a mistake.
A minute later, the reply came:
LOL.
22
The next day Rivanah went to City Centre Mall with her mother who made her buy an expensive lehenga-choli for Mou’s reception because Abhiraj’s other relatives would be present there.
After the Mukherjee family left the other night, Rivanah decided not to talk to her parents about the matter. Nothing was said to her directly so why should she confront them about it either? If Abhiraj was to be believed, then he would anyway tell his parents that he won’t marry her and if he doesn’t, then she would talk to her parents about it.
‘Didn’t you talk to baba about Danny?’ she asked her mother while having ice cream by the Gelato counter.
‘I did,’ her mother said sounding a little grim.
‘What did he say?’ Rivanah knew what her father’s response would have been but still she was keeping her hopes up.
‘It’s impossible.’
‘Why mumma? Just because he is not a Hindu? Just because he is a struggling actor?’
‘This “just because” is not as insignificant a thing as you are making it out to be. Nobody from our family would support you or us. Don’t you know what happened with your Meghna di? Her parents still haven’t recovered from it. Your pishi didn’t even invite them for Mou’s wedding.’
The mention of Meghna brought back the images of her verbal spats with Aadil. Rivanah immediately convinced herself even if Danny and she got married, they would never tire of love. And then her innermost insecurity told her: you thought the same about Ekansh too, remember?
‘I would suggest you forget Danny,’ Mrs Bannerjee said wiping off the ice cream from the sides of her mouth with a napkin.
‘Tell me mumma, what’s the most important thing in a marriage now that you have been married to baba for close to twenty seven years? Isn’t it love?’
Her mother seemed lost in her thoughts for some time before she said, ‘Not love. I would say ignorance. A successful marriage depends on ignorance.’
Rivanah shot her an incredulous look.
‘If it was love, your baba would have respected my decision of being a working woman. I chose to ignore my own desires otherwise it would have been difficult to stay with him and raise you. And I’m sure he must have also ignored a lot of my things.’
‘I disagree with you mumma. You two couldn’t have possibly been in love because you married a total stranger. I love Danny because I have been with him for some months now and will be till we get married.’
‘You were with Ekansh too. Did you know him well? Mini, you have to understand this dear that we can only know a person from what he is and not from what he can be. He can be a lot many things besides the thing that we see, the thing that we are in love with.’
Rivanahk new it was futile explaining anything to her parents because they would never understand where she was coming from. They were from a different generation. They grew up in a different world and thus had a different perspective toward life. The best would be to fly off to Mumbai right after the reception. As they say out of sight, out of mind.
The next evening, the entire Bannerjee family went to Mou’s reception. The way her parents introduced her to every member of Abhiraj’s family made her feel embarrassingly conscious all through the evening. It was as if a pair of eyes was always on her, ready to judge every move of hers.
‘Did you tell your parents that you are not interested in the marriage?’ Rivanah asked Abhiraj when she met him alone by the Fuchka stall.
‘I haven’t yet,’ he told her.
‘You know…’ she started only to be cut short by him.
‘I really want to marry you Rivanah and I can’t lie to my parents about it,’ he said in one breath.
‘Do you want to marry someone who loves another guy?’
‘Give me a chance,’ he said with pride.
‘What makes you think you deserve one?’
‘I love you, that’s why.’
‘You love me? Because we talked for some time last evening and an evening prior to that? I thought you were smarter than that.’
Abhiraj was quiet.
‘You don’t have to lie to your parents. I’ll do the needful.’
Rivanah was done with her Fuchka. She simply walked to her mother and complained that her head was aching and that she wanted to go home and rest. She took the car’s keys from her father, asked him to take a cab while returning, and drove herself home.
The first thing she did was prepone her previous flight ticket to Mumbai for the next morning. When her parents came back home later that night, she told them that her team lead had called and asked her to report to office the next day because an important client was visiting them. Though her parents understood their daughter was miffed with them, they couldn’t talk about it because she too didn’t bring up the subject. Rivanah was tired of explaining the same thing to them over and over again. She loved Danny; her parents had to accept it. There was no other option she was giving them. Whether they wanted to do so wholeheartedly or not was their call.
The next day she decided to go straight to Danny’s flat first from the airport. When he called up, she lied to him saying she was still in Kolkata. She wanted to give him a sexy surprise. Danny was supposed to come to his flat in the evening. She cleaned his flat, cooked for him, and was waiting with bated breath for the love of her life to return. It was while waiting for him that there was a sudden power cut. She was about to call him back when she heard someone unlock the door. Rivanah presumed it was Dan
ny and stealthily walked to the drawing room. Holding her breath, she was waiting to jump on him when someone put a ribbon around her eyes and blindfolded her. She could smell the deodorant that Danny wore all the time: ‘Just Different’ by Hugo Boss. Before she could talk, her hands were handcuffed as well.
23
Danny kept calling Rivanah’s phone for an hour but nobody answered. Arriving at their apartment, he found her flat was locked. A nervous Danny eventually relaxed when he saw her in the drawing room of his flat lying on the mattress with a blindfold. Though her pose was a casual one, the fact that she wasn’t responding to him told him something otherwise. He removed the blindfold, shook her up, and sprinkled some water on her eyes after which Rivanah started moving her limbs slightly. She looked at Danny in an unfamiliar way. Seconds later, she hugged him tight.
‘What happened? Don’t tell me you were asleep?’ Danny held her in his strong arms, stroking her hair.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. What she meant was she didn’t know what happened after someone made her sniff something on a piece of cloth after which she was tied and stripped naked. She quickly checked the clothes she was wearing: it was a white tank top with black pyjamas, not the clothes she had been wearing before she lost her senses. And she could feel fresh inners too. Rivanah clearly remembered the one she was wearing before had been cut by...it had to be the stranger. Did he fuck her as well?
‘What do you mean you don’t know? What happened here? Why were you wearing a blindfold and sleeping?’ Danny questioned, holding her strongly by her shoulders.
‘I was attacked,’ she blurted out holding the blindfold without wishing to share the incident with Danny.
‘Just calm down and tell me what really happened?’
‘Please give me some water.’ Danny left her and sprang toward the kitchen. Should she tell him about the stranger? What happened a few hours back in the darkness of the power cut was not something that a well-wisher would do to you.
‘Here,’ Danny said extending the glass of water towards her. She gulped half the water in the glass at one go and said, ‘There was a power cut. I heard the door unlock and when I came to this room I was blindfolded and attacked.’
Danny looked around.
‘But everything looks in place. Why would someone attack you and then leave without touching anything. In fact, even you don’t look hurt. Are you?’
Rivanah nodded quietly. She was still not willing to tell Danny what really happened.
They had a silent dinner after which they slept together. Though Danny had to meet Nitya in the morning, Rivanah didn’t let him go till she was ready for office herself. She would have messaged the stranger about the incident but couldn’t because neither Danny nor she could sleep all night.
Once in office, she sat down by the cubicle and had just opened her phone’s inbox to type a message when a security guard came to her.
‘You have a parcel,’ he said and kept a big brown envelope on her table along with a box covered in brown paper. He gave her a piece of paper where she signed next to her name. The guard went away. She kept her phone on the desk and took the envelope in her hand. She tried to feel it. Something soft; she thought. There was no return address written on it. A curious Rivanah cut open the parcel.
I’m sorry, the paper note said.
Inside the box was a lavender coloured lace negligee. Rivanah frowned. Is it from the stranger? For the first time he had given her a gift. She wasn’t surprised he knew her favourite colour. Rivanah kept the negligee inside lest someone saw it and picked up her phone to type a message to the stranger:
Why did you do what you did last night? Is that all that you wanted: to tie and fuck me?
It was during her lunch that the stranger replied:
I told you we shall meet once you are back from Kolkata. BTW, I didn’t fuck you.
Then why did you blindfold me, tie me up, strip me naked, and rub my make up off?
I wanted to see how you really look like without any kind of a mask.
Mask? What are you talking about?
When was the last time you made a mistake Mini? A terrible, terrible mistake?
I have answered that already. Ekansh was a mistake.
Think hard and be honest.
I’m being honest.
Sometimes we lie not to cover the truth but to cover that side of us which the truth may strip to bareness.
I don’t understand.
You better do else I’ll have to make you understand.
Why is he suddenly sounding threatening? Rivanah thought. What does he want from me? Why is he asking the same question again and again when I have answered him honestly? Rivanah didn’t message back nor did she receive any message till evening when she was buying milk from a shop right opposite to her place.
I hope you liked the dress.
That’s my favourite colour, she responded.
I’m sure when you will wear it, you shall be my favourite.
A smile touched her face as she took the milk pouches and crossed the lane to reach her building. The stranger sure knew how to flatter and impress a girl after being rude to her. Or was it some sort of a mind-game he was playing with her?
Rivanah showed the negligee to Ishita that night.
‘Wow! So the stranger is finally starting to dote on you, huh?’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ Rivanah said. She thought Ishita wouldn’t have said all this had she known how threatening the stranger sounded during the day. Was he a schizophrenic?
‘What if he proposes to you next? Whom will you choose—Danny or the stranger?’
‘Come on, I love Danny!’
Ishita gave her a mean look and said, ‘That’s the problem with you moralistic girls. You don’t know how to enjoy.’
‘What would you have chosen?’
‘Me?’ Ishita said with pride, ‘I would have dated the stranger.’
‘And Danny.’
‘Please don’t mind girl, but I don’t think Danny is the marrying kinds yet.’
Rivanah knew Ishita was being honest at the cost of sounding rude. Danny was still a struggling actor and model. But would she date the stranger in spite of being in love with Danny? Then a thought occurred to her: Why the hell was she even considering it when she knew well the stranger never did what she expected of him?
24
Rivanah didn’t know who she was more proud of—herself or the kids when all ten of them passed their test of writing the alphabets from A to Z without looking at their textbooks. A couple of them even wrote basic but correct sentences with the simple English words given to them. She clicked pictures of all their papers with her phone and sent them to Danny. She also uploaded a few on Facebook with a status update: Happiness is when your students score full and you score high.
As a treat she arranged for the ten kids to have a sumptuous dinner at KFC in Infinity Mall in Malad west. While she was wiping her fingers with the napkin one of the kids asked, ‘Tai, when is our next test?’
Everyone laughed out aloud. Rivanah knew how much this one dinner meant to them. The bill of that one meal amounted to eleven hundred and fifty rupees: an amount with which she would have purchased a single dress before. The irony of it weighed on her. She smiled at the kid who had by now pushed the burger down his throat.
‘Very soon. Now nobody leaves the table till I’m back, alright?’ Rivanah said and went to the washroom. She came back to notice the kids were crowding around something kept at the centre of the table. She soon noticed there was a small box inside from which shone two diamond studs. Rivanah was more than surprised.
‘Who kept these here?’ she asked the kids staring at the diamond studs.
One of the kids looked around and gestured at a woman. Her uniform told her she was one of the cleaning ladies. Rivanah picked up the box and scampered to the cleaning staff.
‘Did you keep this on that table?’ Rivanah asked holding the stud box.
The woman no
dded.
‘Who gave you this?’ Rivanah said.
The cleaning lady looked around for a moment and pointed toward a middle-aged man who was busy buying Dosa from a South Indian eatery. She went to him.
‘Excuse me, did you give this box to that woman there?’
The middle-aged man checked out Rivanah once in an annoying manner and nodded.
‘Why did you give it to her?’
‘I was asked to pass it on, so I simply did.’
‘Who asked you to pass it on?’
The man pointed out toward a teenager who was busy having ice cream with another girl in the food court. Rivanah rushed to the boy and asked him the same question: who gave you the box? The boy looked around like the others and aimed at a woman who was sitting with her kid at another corner. Rivanah rushed to the woman. When she inquired about the box, the woman told her an old woman had given it to her and asked her to pass it to the young boy. Rivanah looked around but there wasn’t any old woman in sight anymore. The ten kids had joined her by then.
‘What happened tai?’ asked one of them.
Rivanah said, ‘Nothing’. She understood it was useless to spot the stranger. He had used a chain of people to reach her. And some of them must have left the food court by then. As her breath came back to normal, she looked at the studs. They were gorgeous. Was Ishita right about the stranger developing a soft corner for her?
‘What’s that tai?’ a girl in the group asked her pointing toward the roller coaster on which people were screaming their lungs out.
‘Do you guys want to check it out?’ she asked the group lovingly.
There was a collective nod. Rivanah arranged for the kids to experience the roller coaster ride while she stood near its gate waving happily at them and making a video recording of it. She stopped in-between when she received a message from an unknown number.
Hope you liked the studs.
Why are you doing this?
What do you think?
Answer me straight.
When does a guy gift a girl a pair of studs?
You know that I’m committed, right? she messaged.
Marry Me, Stranger Page 16