EX

by Novoneel Chakraborty

  ‘Hmm. It does seem like a missing case. Anyway…’ Inspector Parimal Biswas stands up. So do Neel and his father.

  ‘I shall see what I can do.’ The inspector pulls up his trousers that has fallen a little below his protruding belly.

  ‘And don’t worry,’ he says, ‘Mr Chatterjee, all of it will be discreet. So when did you last see her?’

  ‘Last morning. No, in fact I haven’t seen her since I woke up yesterday morning.’

  ‘Did you two fight over anything?’

  The images of Titiksha mocking him and stating she would go to his parents flashes in front of his eyes. And then the kinky blind-folded sex session which he thought would humiliate her but something else happened. He can’t say the truth, else the suspicion will fall directly on him. A boyfriend who fought with his girlfriend because he found out that she was dating another guy and she goes missing the very next day—a classic crime-of-passion case.

  ‘No. We rarely fought.’

  ‘They love each other.’ Neel’s father steps in. ‘In fact his mother and I were thinking of getting them married this year itself.

  The marriage bit is a lie but Neel keeps quiet.

  ‘Hmm, okay. I shall call you Neel babu, if I get any information regarding her. Good day,’ Parimal trails off and turns to leave.

  ‘Don’t you need a photograph of hers?’ Neel interrupts the inspector’s gait.

  Inspector Parimal Biswas turns to exchange an uncomfortable glance with Neel’s father.

  ‘Thanks for reminding me. You have one with you?’

  ‘Not here with me. Actually Titiksha and I used to click photographs very rarely. Only on birthdays or…’ Neel tries to remember something. Parimal and Neel’s father swap a furtive glance.

  ‘Dad,’ Neel turns towards his father, ‘I think we did click a few photographs when Titiksha was here.’

  ‘Did we?’

  ‘Of course. Remember I clicked one of mom, you, and hers together and then you clicked one of Titiksha’s and mine?

  ‘I don’t.’

  Neel’s father, it seems, knows what his son is talking about but doesn’t want to show he does.

  ‘One minute inspector.’ Neel goes inside, calling out to his mother. Half a minute later, he comes out with a Nikon CoolPix digital camera. His mother has also come out following him.

  ‘Wait, let me show you.’

  ‘What happened?’ Inspector Parimal Biswas asks as Neel stops surfing the photographs in the camera.

  ‘All the other photographs are here but none from the day Titiksha and I were here.’

  ‘I told you Babushona we didn’t get enough time to click any photographs,’ his father says as if making a point.

  ‘Never mind. I’ll get my own camera. It’s kept somewhere in my flat.’

  Neel takes his leave before the inspector does.

  ‘Where are you going? It’s almost lunch time. Stay Babushona,’ pleads Neel’s mother.

  ‘I’ll come back soon, mom.’

  Neel leaves for his rented flat. All through the way, he keeps thinking hard about the day Titiksha and he had visited his parents’ place. It was the day he had introduced her to them. They had definitely clicked photographs. In fact he remembers the positions too. In all, four photographs had been clicked: two of both of them together by the dining table and the couch, one of his parents and Titiksha by the couch, and one of Titiksha, his mother, and him in the balcony. Then how come those photographs were not there in the camera anymore? Has someone deleted them intentionally? Does he have a backup in his laptop? Neel isn’t sure. He hasn’t seen them since a long time now. Has he ever seen them? He can’t recollect. Then he remembers his mother had not let him take the camera with him. He doesn’t remember why.

  Neel reaches his rented flat in Lake Town. He goes straight to the bedroom where there is a Godrej almirah. As he moves towards it, his foot hits something. The hit takes the object to someplace else. Neel looks around and notices the object is now lying under the table. He bends down to pick it up. It’s a cigarette packet. Marlboro. Nivrita’s brand. What is it doing here? Neel asks himself. Was Nivrita here in his absence? But how can she be here? Only Titiksha and he had the keys. The main door is locked properly. There is no sign of forced entry either. A pigeon flaps its wings outside the window where it has laid an egg on one of the empty flower pots left there by an earlier tenant. Neel never felt like removing it. Nor did Titiksha. Now as he looks at the window, and notices that it is half open. He guesses someone must have thrown the cigarette packet from outside. Why?

  Neel opens the cigarette packet. He finds something has been stashed inside it. He brings it out. It looks like an old piece of paper…a cut out of lips…inside there’s a poem written…or is it a song?

  Just like it was in the story Nivrita was narrating to him. And the one Neel is writing.

  FROM NEEL’S MANUSCRIPT

  10

  Love makes all of life’s coincidences seem like real intention. My parents’ divorce, my shifting to Salt Lake International School, getting drenched on my first day to school, Neel’s presence in the class, the shirt-swap, and all of the subsequent events were no coincidence even though it seemed so when they were happening. Coincidences in life—they make our stories interesting.

  I don’t know much about what happened at the party after I walked out of it, after Neel’s open confession that he loved me. Later Neel told me nothing much happened. Avni left the party citing a headache. His parents, more importantly, were not harsh on him. For the first time in his life, he said, his parents didn’t make a fuss about his choice. I was happy to know that because it only meant they had accepted his choice—they had accepted me.

  In school, Neel and I were given the couple-of-the-year kind of treatment. It’s not that Neel and I talked much. But because all our classmates kept nudging us respectively all the time, we felt like we were in an affair which neither of us formally maintained. I kept stalking him in school and at times he stalked me too. The hide-n-seek we played gave me soul-orgasms. It was a game we both were participating but neither accepted it. He made me forget to keep track of time. And that’s the best thing anyone can do for someone. It’s because time brings the past and future into existence. With my mind off time, I was finally ‘living’ in the truest sense of the word.

  I couldn’t take Neel off my mind though. I felt like I was possessed by him. So much so that at certain moments it didn’t even matter if I loved him or if he loved me for I knew he had consumed me, and I could live a life off that consumption.

  A few weeks after the birthday party incident, and after a lot of thought, I finally asked him, ‘Why did you say that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That you love me.’

  ‘Why did you tell my mom that you loved me?’

  ‘I felt like doing so.’

  ‘Same here.’

  ‘What did you feel?’

  ‘That I love you.’

  I blushed a little but didn’t make it obvious.

  ‘No, I mean what exactly did you feel and why did you say it only at that moment?’

  Neel, with a frown, started looking here and there, as if he was desperately searching for an apt answer.

  ‘I like your presence. And it does something to me. I don’t know what.’

  In that ‘I-don’t-know-what’, I got to know a lot about him, about me, and about us.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘When did you fall for me?’

  ‘The day we swapped shirts.’

  ‘You mean you wouldn’t have fallen for me if we hadn’t swapped shirts?’

  It was my turn to surmise an apt answer.

  ‘Why don’t you see it this way: it’s because we were supposed to fall for each other that we swapped shirts. Incidents are merely an excuse. A means to an end.’

  ‘You know what I like best about you?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Forget it. If I tell you, then you will consciously t
ry to maintain it. I would rather love it if you keep doing whatever it is unknowingly.’

  If that’s what made you fall for me, I will...I wondered but we left it at that.

  All through the night, I kept guessing what it could be. What could be that thing in me which was worthy enough for someone to love me? I was lying on my bed, smiling to myself, when Yo-didun came and sat beside me.

  ‘So it has finally happened.’

  ‘What Yo-didun?’ I sat up on the bed feigning innocence.

  ‘When a girl of sixteen years smiles to herself before going to bed, it means it has happened.’

  ‘It has,’ I said rather softly. ‘Why, shouldn’t it have happened?’

  Yo-didun sighed touching my chin with her fingertips and then immediately kissed those fingers as if she stole a kiss from my chin.

  ‘It’s strange, isn’t it? Falling in love eventually becomes the one big event of your life. I’m seventy-nine. And every night I keep thinking about the number of times I fell in love.’

  ‘Did you fall in love more than once, Yo-didun?’

  ‘More than once? I fell in love so many times that I have lost count.’

  That was a revelation. Until then, I had thought Dadu was the only man in her life.

  ‘If the one you love doesn’t make you fall in love with him again and again, then you were never in love with that person to begin with.’ I met your Dadu for the first time on the first of November 1955. He was my father’s favourite student. The next year he got himself a job and we were married. He died sooner than I thought he would. In the days that followed I really thought I had lost him, but as I kept thinking about our times when he was there with me, I understood he was that kind of a novel which even after you are done reading it, stays with you. You keep wondering about its lines, certain passages, and then you realize that there is more meaning to them than you thought while reading it for the first time. And thus even after your Dadu’s death I kept falling in love with him again and again.’

  She gave me an endearing smile.

  I hope my love for Neel is something similar, I thought. I slept well that night.

  Avni started avoiding me in school after Neel’s birthday party, and her silly groupies kept looking at me detestfully whenever I passed by them. Not that I cared about them, but I never abused Avni or her groupies because I knew if I was in her place, I would also not appreciate someone snatching Neel from me or acknowledge if Neel willingly got inclined towards any other girl just like he did towards me being in a relationship with Avni. True, he wasn’t in a relationship with Avni by choice, but then he could have told Avni about it rather than playing on with the relationship just for the sake of it. Maybe she loved him just as much as I did.

  This negative feeling towards Neel disturbed me. I had never experienced anything like this before. I knew nobody was perfect but still I would have been happier if Neel had told Avni that he was in a relationship with her because his parents wanted him to be, and not because he was really in love with her. And what was that they did behind the bookshelf in the library? I had seen it only once but I was sure they had kissed a lot many times before and after that. It troubled me so much that I chose to become blind towards Neel’s imperfections. For every imperfection of his, I was churning out a perfect excuse to cover him. I wasn’t comfortable doing it. I never talked to him or anybody else about it either. Since my parents were divorced, I had already seen how brittle relationships could get with time. I didn’t want Neel and my relationship to ever reach that brittle stage where one of us broke it into pieces and told the other that it was for good.

  From the very beginning, I had full faith that Neel would love me one day. But when he actually started loving me, I began feeling insecure about him. Maybe it was because before Neel I had nobody in my life, whom I could hold on to, whom I could call mine. He was my first emotional possession. People don’t leave their house locked fearing their stuff would be stolen. They do so because they know they have something priceless with them which they can’t afford to share or lend to others. But how could I lock Neel only to myself?

  From the night this thought occurred to me, I started noticing weird things about Neel which I had never noticed before, or had chosen to ignore in love. Every time I met him in school or in tuition, I had a problem if he talked to a girl or laughed with her. If he didn’t look at me when I was looking at him, I felt enraged. I started expecting things from him which I knew didn’t matter, and yet those insignificant things would hurt me if left unfulfilled by Neel. Until one day he told me something after school.

  ‘Mom wants to meet you Titiksha.’

  I didn’t know why but with those words I felt Neel and my relationship would never ever be brittle again, that my fears were uncalled for. To my heart’s relief, I somehow convinced myself that no other girl would ever be able to snatch Neel away from me. Yo-didun was right. There’s always this craving for a physical proximity—and physical ownership—in everyone’s idea of love.

  11

  ‘May I please talk with her alone, Neel?’

  We were in Neel’s bedroom. Neel’s mother was great to talk to, quite different from what she was on Neel’s birthday. I had not slept the night before, wondering what was it that she wanted to meet me for. But seeing her favourable attitude towards me, I relaxed.

  ‘Sure mom,’ Neel said. He gave me an assuring look and left the room. As he went away, his mom smiled at me, stood up, and ambled towards the door to lock it. I kept looking at her as she picked up her costly-looking purse and rummaged through it. She took out a cigarette packet and a lighter. She lit the cigarette and put the packet and the lighter back inside her purse. She took a deep puff and came back to sit beside me. She suddenly made a face as if I was stinking.

  ‘Neel told me that your parents are divorced and that you live with your uncle who works as an accountant in a college?’

  ‘Yes. That’s true.’

  ‘You know that you don’t belong to our financial class, right?’

  I knew what she meant. By then I’d guessed the goody-goody attitude she had showed in the beginning was only because Neel was around. This was her real self.

  ‘I know I don’t belong to a rich family,’ I said.

  ‘Then what are you doing with Neel?’

  ‘I love him.’

  ‘That’s what every poor girl says when she meets a rich boy.’

  In that moment, I realized why Neel’s mom wanted to meet me. She wanted me to move out of his life simply because I didn’t belong to, as she implied, the same financial class as them. I also understood why she was so submissive in front of Avni all the time. She belonged to an even higher financial class than Neel.

  ‘I’m not a poor girl. Both my parents work and they sponsor my studies. I am from a well-to-do family.’

  ‘How very wonderful of them! Equally good is the fact that you are aware that they are working hard to educate you. So why don’t you make use of this opportunity and study hard instead of loitering around with my son?’

  ‘I study hard aunty.’

  ‘But all this love business won’t help your focus.’

  ‘My love for Neel doesn’t defocus me in anyway.’

  My resilience wasn’t helping her intention. She must have thought I was a TGIF when she called me here. Well, I was never a TGIF anyway. Finally she stubbed her cigarette in an ashtray and said, ‘Forget Neel. Neel’s dad and I have grand plans for his wedding with Avni. Now come out with me and tell Neel that you will never meet him again, and that he deserves someone better.’ She held my chin roughly and pressed her fingers on my face hard. It hurt but I didn’t budge except for looking at her straight as she said, ‘Is that clear?’

  A few seconds passed by. Her eyes were burning with contempt. I nodded in agreement after which she let go of my face.

  ‘You are a nice girl, Titiksha.’

  I followed her as she moved out. My steps were heavy for I knew this could be the
last time I was meeting Neel. I knew I would continue to see him in school and tuition but with a sense of loss, knowing he would eventually be someone else’s. His mom wanted me to tell him that he deserved someone better than me. But how could I tell him all that when I had desired and coveted Neel ever since I saw him, and also knew he did the same for me? Was this temporary life that I lived between seeing Neel for the first time to the day when he left his mom and me alone in his bedroom, an illusion? Yo-didun always told me life was one big magic trick and if one wanted to enjoy the trick, one shouldn’t be too inquisitive about it. Otherwise the trick shall disappoint you. Was I being too inquisitive about my own life being in love with Neel?

  As I reached the hall room downstairs, I found Neel flipping through a sports magazine, sitting by the sofa. The Doberman was sitting by his side. Neel stood up the moment he saw me. His mom was standing by the stairs looking at us. At me in particular.

  ‘Hey, are you leaving?’ Neel came up to me.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So early? Weren’t we supposed to go for tuition together?’ I stole a glance at his mom who was waiting for me to tell Neel whatever she had told me upstairs in his bedroom.

  ‘I need to tell you something, Neel.’

  He gave me an enquiring frown.

  ‘Your mother told me something while you were here.’

  Neel looked up once at his mom and then at me.

  ‘What did mom tell you?’

  ‘She said…’ I raised my voice a bit and continued. ‘She likes me a lot and never wants me to leave you, come what may. Actually she thinks we are a perfect couple.’

  Neel beamed as he looked up again at his mom and gave her a flying kiss.

  ‘I love you mom,’ he said.

  His mother returned his kiss with another flying kiss rather reluctantly, all the while looking at me with scorn.

  ‘Let’s go for our tuition now. And please, let’s walk. No car this time,’ I said to Neel. It was directed more at his mom, though.

  That was perhaps the first time I had claimed my ownership of Neel to someone other than myself. If I ever deserved the Best-Bitch Award, this was the moment.