EX

by Novoneel Chakraborty

  12

  Yo-didun couldn’t believe Neel’s mom had told me such nasty things. But she was also proud of how I handled the situation. Although it was spiteful, his mom deserved every bit of it. Her words weren’t exactly honey-coated either. After listening to me, Yo-didun also said that’s how great love stories were created: when someone dared to do something unexpected or when someone decided to sacrifice something dear. I had done both that day. I had dared to disagree with Neel’s mom and I had also sacrificed my self-esteem owing to my love for Neel. Stupidly enough, I was feeling happy even after I knew I had been humiliated like never before.

  For the next few weeks, Neel would take a cycle-rickshaw and come to my mama’s house to fetch me. The first day I was a bit nervous seeing him by the house gate.

  ‘Please don’t come here,’ I told him fearing mama’s reaction. If he saw a boy from my school at his place, he would have thought of all kinds of things. I have never had any boy calling me up, even on my landline number, ever, so a boy visiting my place would have been stretching it too far. Even the neighbourhood wasn’t a good one. People noticed whoever frequented the neighbourhood, whose house they went to, when and why. Thankfully the first day nobody really noticed Neel.

  From then on, Neel decided to wait for me at the bus stop close to my place. I too used to move out a few minutes before my normal time. Bijoya mami said she wouldn’t be able to provide me breakfast because I was leaving the house ten minutes early. I sacrificed my breakfast. When I told Neel about it, he solved my breakfast problem by bringing me breakfast from his home. I didn’t like that.

  ‘But the cook loves me. She gives me extra without telling mom about it.’

  Sharing breakfast with him behind the bus stop together had its own charm, and I chose not to say anything to disrupt it. Neel would intentionally come to school early. After his car dropped him, he would take a cycle-rickshaw to the bus stop where I would meet him, we would share breakfast, and together take another cycle-rickshaw to school. Everyday seemed like a new life. We talked when we were quiet, we were quiet when we talked, we were happy when we looked serious, and we were serious when we were happy. Every significant exchange between us was special and every insignificant thing was magical.

  It was while getting down from the cycle-rickshaw in front of the school one day that Avni saw us. Not that we cared. We were on our way inside the school premises when she came up to us and said, ‘So Titiksha has brought you to the level of a cycle-rickshaw from your suave car? Good luck Neel for your future,’ saying this she was gone.

  What I never understood was why this world was infested with people who judged an individual on the basis of their possessions and not what was within them. Nobody, except Yo-didun, appreciated the fact that I loved Neel a lot. All people noticed was if my parents were divorced or not, if I lived in a big house or not. Going by Neel’s mom, I would have deserved him if my family was richer than Avni’s. Why this materialization of love? Yo-didun had once told me how Bijoya mami married my mama because he had a secure job then. But then so many people might have had secure jobs? Given a choice, would Bijoya mami live with all of them? Prior to that, I always thought it was simple: you love someone then you get married, and remain together forever. But seeing his parents’ reaction as well as how my own parents handled their marriage, even when it was a love marriage, I was totally perplexed. I tried to share my quandaries with Yo-didun at times but instead of answering like she always did, she asked me to discover the answers myself as I moved along in life. I didn’t know how Neel perceived this. If he thought my love for him was manipulating him in some way, and making him compromise the luxury he was born with, then my love for him was a failure.

  I didn’t react at Avni’s words when she retorted about the ‘car to cycle-rickshaw’ thing. Neel asked me to avoid her for she was being plain jealous. I believed him. During recess, Avni came to me and said, ‘In case Neel has not told you before, he and I have made out many times—sometimes at his place, sometimes at mine, and also in various corners of our school. So even if you guys are making out, just remember you will always be his second choice. I was and will be his first girl. And you won’t ever know how it is to be someone’s first.’

  And then the image of her going behind the bookshelf, followed by Neel in the library during my first week in school, flashed in front of me. The image told me I would never be what Avni was for him—his first girl. Probably for the first time I understood what jealousy was and how quickly can it burn a heart in love into ashes.

  Chapter 9

  IS TITIKSHA HIDING, MISSING, OR…DEAD?

  Neel feels like there’s some weight on him. The weight seems to be shifting back and forth around his pelvis. As his conscious mind slowly flowers, Neel opens his eyes. He sees Titiksha riding him with her hands on his chest. When did she come in? He wonders and looks at her loose hair covering one side of her face. Her moans are just about audible. As she jerks her head back and straight, the hair shifts from her face a bit. Neel notices her eyes shut tightly, and she looks drunk with passion.

  Neel has no time to question her. He can feel the carnal pleasure himself. He is about to raise his hands to support her juggling breasts with his palm when he hears a bark; a sharp and loud bark. Neel twists his head sideways and sees to his horror a cage inside which a Doberman is barking out at him. Its canines look razor sharp. The Doberman eyes him with such ferocity that given just a little opening in the cage, it will barge out of it and eat him alive. How and why did Titiksha do that; bring a dog inside his flat? What the fuck is wrong with her?

  Neel hears another bark. He pans his eyes and notices there are two, three, four, five, six, seven cages around him in the room and each one has a shining brown Doberman locked inside it, barking away at Neel with darting looks. And at the centre of the cages are Neel and Titiksha fucking away naked.

  With every fierce bark, Neel’s eyes flicker with fear. He is too scared to find his voice. He tries calling out to Titiksha but she puts her hand on his mouth and continues to ride him. Her moans and the dogs’ barks make a scary yet wild sexual concoction for Neel. Before he can choose between pleasure and fear, Titiksha grabs his hands and pulls him forward, herself lying on her back. It happens so quickly that Neel doesn’t get enough time to resist. In an instant Titiksha, from being on top of him, goes under him. They are in the missionary position now with Titiksha tightening the grip of her thighs around Neel’s hips. But there is one problem. There is only a difference of fifteen inches between one of the Doberman’s face and Neel’s. He had not seen this particular one because it had been hiding behind Titiksha till then. Now looking at it eye to eye, he knows this one has to be the fiercest of the lot. It barks. Neel shuts his eyes tight. He feels a pat on his butt from Titiksha, demanding him to move his hips faster. But his focus is no longer on giving Titiksha what she wants. It’s the dog. It’s his fear. By now he has understood the dog won’t come out of the cage. It helps him eye his fear better. And the more he gets accustomed to the fear, the more his pelvic thrusts increase in intensity. The dog isn’t barking anymore but only eyeing him with a growl exposing its canines. The other dogs are surprisingly quiet now. The dog takes a backward stance and leaps onto the cage with full force. Neel almost feels its tongue on his nose tip. His thrusts slow down. Suddenly out of nowhere, Neel barks out loud at it. The dog mellows down. Neel has surprised himself by barking like a dog. He looks down at Titiksha. She is moaning in ecstasy. He hears the dog bark. Neel barks louder. The dog barks even louder. Before Neel can continue this barking contest, he feels something building up inside him; an orgasm. He fastens his hip movement and feels as if his thigh and hip muscles may suffer a spasm any moment. As Neel barks once more, his head goes closer to the cage. The dog instantly bites onto his hair and tries to drag him. Neel hollers in pain. Titiksha hollers in pleasure. The dogs bark out in chorus. Neel’s heart is in his mouth. Titiksha’s mind is numb.

  ‘Help me,
Titiksha. Help me,’ Neel cries out. He looks around to see but there’s no Titiksha. There are no dogs either. There’s nothing in the room, in fact, except for haunting silence. It was all a fucking dream? Neel wonders sitting up on his bed. He is naked and has a full blown erection which dies quickly. He rubs his eyes wondering who sees such a weird dream; making out with your girlfriend with killer dogs around.

  As he sits alone on the bed, it dawns on him that he has probably lost Titiksha forever. From now on maybe he will have to only dream about her to get to her. Neel feels defeated from within. He has always loved her from the time he met her in college. She may not be the most perfect woman, but he still loves her.

  For the first time since Titiksha’s sudden disappearance, Neel misses her. Till now he has only thought about her absence but the dream makes him miss her presence. He is emotionally low. He starts crying. Wailing, in fact. In a matter of a minute though he composes himself and gets up. He is about to move out of the bedroom when his eyes fall on the Marlboro packet he had found in his room last night. He picks it up from the table beside the bed. He had kept the chart paper cut out under the packet. Now holding onto the cigarette packet, he picks up the lips-shaped chart paper cut out. He re-reads the lines on the paper. He doesn’t know if it’s the same song that the character Titiksha wrote for Neel in the story on his birthday because Nivrita never told him the song. But Neel nonetheless feels an eerie similarity between the two. He casually flips it. It’s a note of sorts stating: remember where we met for the first time?

  We? As in Neel and…? Nivrita or Titiksha? He met Nivrita at the Jaipur Literature Festival. So what about it? And he met Titiksha in college. Maybe Titiksha wants to meet him in their college. Why? Maybe she will explain the mystery behind the disappearance when he meets her. But why the cigarette packet? Neel thinks for a while and then looks at his watch. It’s 10 in the morning. He has never slept till so late. Whatever happened to his sense of time? He hurries to the toilet. At least he has got a lead now. His college. Maybe all his questions will be answered when he gets to college.

  Neel quickly gets ready to leave. He takes a taxi to where his college is: Munkundapur. It takes him close to two hours to reach the place. He gets down from the taxi after paying the fare and looks around. This is the place where he met Titiksha for the first time. He still remembers that she was wearing a yellow salwar kameez and was carrying a bag. She seemed to have an aura unlike others. Talking of others, he doesn’t know what happened to them. The ones he used to talk to most in college were Arijit Pal, Anirban Debnath, and Rohit Haldar. Neel has no idea what happened to them after college. He tried to keep in touch but they suddenly didn’t seem interested. Then Neel too gave up chasing them.

  Standing by the road opposite to which stood the college once, Neel finds himself staring at an open field which is fenced by barbed wire and in the middle of it there’s a bamboo stick planted on the earth. On top of the stick a board hangs: Gemini Realtors Pvt. Ltd. The entire college building, which at the time of his graduation was expanding, is nowhere in the sight now. Neel’s throat has gone dry. He is sweating a lot more than he usually does.

  He notices a man walking by on the opposite side of the road.

  ‘Excuse me, dada.’

  The man stops to look at him.

  ‘What?’

  Neel crosses the road and comes to the man.

  ‘Isn’t there a college here somewhere?’

  ‘Here?’ The man looks at the direction Neel is pointing at.

  ‘I don’t see one,’ the man gives Neel a are-you-mad look.

  ‘I mean there used to be one here.’ Neel reluctantly changed the tense.

  ‘So?’

  ‘What happened to it?’

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen any college here. How long ago was this?’

  ‘Four-five years.’

  The man’s face twisted in a let-me-think manner.

  ‘I think you should ask Madhu da about this. He’ll know.’

  ‘Madhu da?’

  ‘Come.’

  The man walked ahead and Neel followed him. They reached a small wretched looking motel by the road. Neel had not noticed it when he came to the lane in a taxi a few minutes ago.

  ‘Madhu da, this gentleman wants to know if there was any college here four-five years ago.’

  Madhu da is sitting on a raised platform behind a rickety desk by the entrance of the motel. Looking at his upper half, Neel is sure he is way taller than the normal Indian standard. He looks like he has come straight from his bed to the motel. He looks up at Neel and says, ‘College?’

  Neel nods.

  ‘Yes there used to be one. Students from the college used to come in my motel too.’

  Neel relaxed. He couldn’t have possibly handled a ‘no’ from Madhu da. Neel himself must have missed this motel during his college years because he was picked up and dropped right in front of the college in his father’s car. And he didn’t look around much during those days.

  ‘What happened to it?’ Neel inquired.

  ‘I don’t know. I think five years back, students stopped coming. Then one day the building was broken down.’

  ‘Broken down?’ Neel actually whispers it to himself but the two men hear it clearly.

  ‘Was it an old college?’ asks the man who brought Neel here.

  ‘Not really. It remained for four years.’

  ‘Four years? A college for four years! What nonsense! You can’t believe anyone these days. Everyone is a scamster.’ The man is visibly disgusted. ‘I’m sure it must have been some illegal racket to lure students.’

  Neel does a quick math. ‘Four years’ Madhu da said. It means the college was there only during the time he studied there. Neither before that nor after. Coincidence?

  ‘Look gentleman,’ the man says, ‘Why don’t you look it up on the Internet. The college must have its own website if they are genuine. Maybe they changed its location. My son says the entire world is on the Internet these days. You know Madhu da…’

  Neel’s mind is elsewhere. Why would Titiksha tell me if I remember where we first met when there’s no college here anymore? Or is it the disappearance of the college itself that Titiksha wants me to know about? Is it a clue to her disappearance as well?

  ‘Dada, khe jaben na?’ Madhu da queries if Neel wants to have lunch at his motel. He looks at Madhu da and says, ‘No, thanks.’

  By the time Neel gets himself a taxi to go back home, he has a plan in his mind: he would go to his flat and check about the college on Google. Titiksha has left her Internet dongle at their flat. Its time he should forgo his usual boycott of the virtual world and for a change, make use of it.

  Another one and a half hours later, Neel is there at his flat. The elevator is out of order. He takes the stairs and reaches his flat. There is a heap of clothes in front of his door. He is skeptical about touching them. He drops on one knee and picks them up: one grass-green coloured top and a white jeans. Both smeared with something red…blood. Neel instantly let’s go of the clothes. They belong to Titiksha. That’s what she was wearing when Nivrita saw her last in the mall. Even he had seen a glimpse of it. What the heck is this all about?

  Neel notices the back of the jeans which is now on the floor again. Something is written in blood there. He picks up the jeans and unfolds it completely. He is now able to read the note clearly:

  Neel is a murderer.

  Neel doesn’t know for how long he has been sitting by his rented flat’s door, and crying holding on to the grass-green top and the white jeans, and sniffing it regularly as if that would make Titiksha appear in front of him. The worst has finally happened. Someone has killed Titiksha.

  Neel notices a middle-aged woman climb down the stairs. She pauses seeing Neel. She senses he needs help but Neel quickly hides the clothes, wipes his tears and turns his head away indicating he isn’t interested. As the woman climbs down the stairs, now with a suspicious gaze, Neel gets up with heavy
legs and long-drawn breaths. He takes time to unlock the flat. The key simply isn’t going inside the lock. His mind is unable to focus on anything. After a good minute of struggle he unlocks the door.

  As he closes the door behind, feeling emotionally drained, he clips his nose with his fingers. There’s a rotten stink in the flat. Neel looks around but there’s nothing rotting anywhere. He is having trouble breathing now. He tries to follow the stink and goes to the small corridor connecting the hall and the bedroom. As he passes by his washing machine in the small corridor, he stops. The stink is the maximum in this area. Neel drops the blood smeared top and the jeans he is carrying on the floor. And with trembling hands opens the lid of the washing machine—the stench that comes up from it pushes back Neel. Then slowly he tries to look inside by clasping his nose tightly. What he sees makes him scream out with plain horror.

  ‘Oh God. Oh God! OH MY frigging GOD!’

  There are chopped pieces of flesh inside the washing machine stuffed up to the brim. Neel collapses on the floor. Someone has chopped Titiksha into pieces, and stuffed her body parts inside the washing machine is Neel’s conclusion before he loses consciousness.

  It’s the icky stink of flesh that brings Neel back to consciousness after about an hour or so. He gets up with a start, holding his head. He has a mild headache. Neel opens the washing machine’s lid. There are two pieces of eyes glaring at him. Neel immediately shuts it. He quickly examines the windows of the flat. All are shut tightly. Neel relaxes. If the windows were open, all the inhabitants of the building would have been here by now. And what would he have told them? His girlfriend was missing and now he has her chopped pieces inside the washing machine of his flat? The residents would not waste a second to call the police and hand over Neel to them; the prima facie murderer. What is written on Titiksha’s jeans? That Neel is a murderer. Does that mean Neel has killed Titiksha? And he doesn’t know about it? Wow! What does that note mean, really?