If It’s Not Forever: It’s Not Love

by Datta, Durjoy

  I call Ma. I don’t remember the last time I called her. These days, the only time I talk to her or Dad is when Avantika gives me the phone. Mom and Avantika talk a lot and I feel good about it. I never tell my parents how much they mean to me. No guy does. We are men. We do not know how to express love. That’s why we buy jewellery. We do not hug our dads. Instead, we talk about cricket.

  ‘Ki korchho?’ I ask her. (What are you doing?)

  ‘Nothing. What happened? Is everything okay, Deb?’ I can sense the surprise in her voice. I usually never ask that. I never call my mom. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love her. Two women make my world go round—one is Avantika, the other’s my mom. The third will be Avantika Jr, I guess. But there is still a decade to go for that. I am obsessed with Avantika and our relationship. It’s been like that ever since I was in college.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. I have tears in my eyes. I don’t know why and I almost feel like a girl for being so emotional about it. I want to tell her that I love her. If tomorrow something happens to me, she should know that I love her.

  ‘Umm …’

  There is an awkward silence. This is why I never call my mom. We usually have nothing to talk about other than my eating habits, and whether I am gaining any weight.

  ‘Are you eating properly, Deb?’ she asks. ‘Avantika has been telling me that you skip lunches. This won’t work, Tini.’

  Yeah, Tini. Like everyone, I too was given an embarrassing nickname by my mom—Tini. And somehow, she manages to use it the most whenever she is around my friends.

  ‘I have been eating, Ma. She is just paranoid! And you have given her this disease,’ I say. I know from experience that I should never let Mom start about food. She is obsessed with feeding me. She has happily passed that trait on to Avantika.

  ‘You need to eat, Tini,’ she says.

  ‘Whatever.’

  I can hear Dad in the background. It has been almost six months since I have met them. I miss them. It’s cool to live alone, but not all the time. I miss being irresponsible. I miss being stuffed by my mom, although Avantika is doing a good job of it. Mom knows Avantika spends a lot of time at my place.

  I hang up after a while and try to sleep. As soon as I close my eyes, it all comes back to me. I try to push those gory images out of my head. I desperately need a distraction. Maybe thinking about Avantika would help; it always does, but not this time. People died. And it was just yesterday. Right in front of my eyes. Dreams crushed. Lives ended. Children lost.

  How can I sleep?

  I am Still Awake

  I can feel Avantika’s soft hands running over my chest. She is sleeping, tired from what we finished about an hour ago. Avantika has always been good in bed. Over the last five years, she has only gotten better. Even tonight, when she crept up on the bed, her eyes dripping with passion and her hands going to all the places they should have, I felt like a man bereft of love since eternity. It took me just a few seconds to rip every shred of cloth off her and subject her to pain and ecstasy.

  She was incredible with her hands, her tongue and her body tonight. I know the reason. She wanted to tire me out and make me sleep. She had her reasons. She was getting worried about me. I was getting worried about me. I have not slept for the last fifteen days. Neither have I been to my office or the gym. She was afraid I might fall sick.

  Last night she asked me to see a psychologist or a therapist. I was totally averse to the idea.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want to see a therapist?’ she had asked.

  ‘No! I have not gone mad yet.’

  ‘But, Deb, you need help,’ she said. ‘You have not slept since the blast.’

  ‘I am trying, Avantika. It’s just that I can’t manage to push those images out of my head.’

  ‘What images? You want to talk about it?’

  ‘So you will be my therapist?’ I smirked.

  ‘I can try,’ she said and gave me one of her trademark cute smiles.

  I paused for a while and then started to talk.

  ‘Umm … there … there … were people who were looking at me. With no hands or legs, or whose stomachs had been blown apart … they were begging for help. And all I could do was stare. I wish I could’ve saved them … At least one of them …’

  ‘It’s not your fault, Deb.’

  ‘I know. But those faces, those eyes that looked at me with sheer horror in them, they wanted me to help them. I … I … just can’t forget that. There was a small kid who tried getting up thrice, but his legs had been blown off from below his knees. He … he was bleeding. He looked at me. He was crying, screaming … and then went silent … his eyes went vacant as he lay there in a pool of his own blood. I couldn’t do anything. There were scores of people like that kid … they wanted me to help them …’ My voice trailed off.

  ‘They did not want you to help, Deb. They wanted anyone to help them, and you were there. But it wasn’t your fault that you could not be of help. No one could have been … It is not your fault. You’re only human …’ Avantika said.

  She came close and hugged me. I closed my eyes and those images flashed before me again. ‘I wish I had saved just one of them.’

  Maybe I do need to see a therapist. It is not that I have not tried sleeping. Sex. Sleeping pills. A Tusshar Kapoor movie. Nothing has worked. Ever since that day, the images have been haunting me. I don’t understand why it is taking me so long to recover. I’d never thought I could be so weak. Why should I care about unknown dead people and their families? I mean—who does that, right? I should go on with my life and forget what happened. After all, I am alive. Why should I care about the others? I know I should move on. But that’s exactly what I have not been doing.

  I switch on the television. The news of the blast barely finds a mention now. A gay party raid finds more airtime. It is sick and creepy, but I feel like watching the news of the blast repeatedly. It is that place, that moment, that chaos that changed everything. The more I am repulsed by it, the more I am drawn to the same place. I want to be there again. There is a part of me there now.

  Finally, I find a channel that is running a report on the blast. I increase the volume a little and listen. There is nothing new. No one has come up and taken the responsibility. I want someone to do that. At least then, I will be able to direct my anger towards somebody.

  I turn it off and slowly remove Avantika’s arm from my chest. I get up from the bed, make myself a cup of warm milk and stand in the balcony. I stare into the wide empty space and feel nothing. What happened fifteen days ago killed a part of me. I have recurring images of ashes flying around me. In those images, I am bleeding, helpless, staggering and looking around for somebody to help me. I am taken to a dingy hospital on a bloodied stretcher and I wake up without a leg or an arm.

  My head is filled with images such as these. They change a little every time. Some of the times I die, at other times I lose an arm or a leg. It happened to someone else. It could have been me. This keeps repeating in my head. I keep telling myself how lucky I have been.

  Avantika is happy today. I am smiling today, although it’s forced. She thinks it is the sex from last night. Yes, it was good, but that is not the reason. It is just that I don’t want to end up crazy. It was just a blast, right? It happens every month somewhere or the other. People die. Some more painfully than others. Big deal! I have to forget that day. I have to get over it. Many people have. It should not be too hard for me either.

  ‘Are you feeling better, baby?’ Avantika asks. She is wearing a skimpy silver night suit with white lacy embroidery on it. I’m sure she expects me to skip breakfast and make love to her. At least a shower together. I can sense it in her eyes, in her lingering touches and her quiet whispers. However, I must disappoint her today. I have to leave for office and not think about the blast.

  ‘Yes, I am,’ I say. ‘Can you pack the breakfast? I will have it on the way?’

  ‘You are going to office? Are you sure?’ she asks.

/>   ‘Yes,’ I say and get up. I can see Avantika’s face droop. Obviously! I should have been making sweet love to her and not be thinking about what happened sixteen days earlier, but I cannot help it. I take my bag and leave the house.

  ‘Deb?’ Shrey says as he picks up the call.

  ‘Yes, I am coming to office.’

  ‘You are? Everything fine now?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes,’ I say.

  It is embarrassing to admit to your guy friends that you are bothered with such petty things. People die every day. It takes only one gesture to lose all respect as far as being macho is concerned. You can lift ridiculous weights in the gym and stop trains with bare hands all your life, but the moment someone spots a pink stuffed toy in your hand, you are screwed for life. The blast was the pink stuffed toy for me. I faltered. I am screwed for life.

  After all, for everyone else, it was just a bomb blast, and I was at least 500 feet away! I spent fifteen days locked up like a scared little kid. I have lost all my machoness.

  I look out of the auto. It has been long since I stepped into one of these. But now, for a few days, this will have to be my mode of transport. My car was burnt beyond recognition. Call me a sissy, but I was a little sceptical about the auto too. Who knows? Another bomb carrier?

  The auto takes a different route. It takes a left, and I see the blast site from a distance. The cars are still lined up in their burnt state there and my car is amongst them.

  ‘Bhaiya, can you drop me there?’ I ask him and point to the parking lot.

  The auto driver nods and heads there. I pay him ten rupees more than the fare and get down. He smiles. I had hoped I would feel good after helping a stranger and making him smile—something I couldn’t do that day. But nothing changes. Money can’t buy you happiness. But it does buy terrorists stuff to make bombs with. Now I am pissed at myself. Why can’t I think about anything else?

  I walk towards my car. Everything has returned to normalcy. The blood has been washed off the streets. People have found places to park their bikes amidst the burnt cars. There are hawkers on the streets again. I am sure some of them are missing.

  I walk close to the car and look around. It is burnt and black. I don’t know what I am doing there. I turn and watch life go by. I look at people and think—Are they going through the same?

  I trudge towards the place where the bomb had gone off. The ground is black, charred and there is a huge crater there. I could have been there, I think.

  I no longer want to go to office. I take a deep breath and start walking close to the pavement. There is a guy cleaning the street. I wonder if he was around that day. He seems unfazed. Life goes on for him.

  ‘Dekh ke!’ the cleaner shouts out as I stumble over a dustbin.

  ‘Fuck,’ I say to myself. My shirt is ruined and I curse the road. It is just not one of my better days. The road cleaner helps me up and I smile at him. I thank him and keep walking ahead. Suddenly a voice calls out from behind.

  ‘Bhaiya!’

  I look back to see the cleaner running to me, waving his hand frantically. He is carrying a notebook in his hands. He shows it to me and asks, ‘Is this yours?’

  I look at it. It is a diary, which is in tatters. The back cover is totally burnt and its edges have been consumed by fire. I stare at it for a while. It must have dropped out of the dustbin I had just stumbled over. I look at it again. I want to shake my head and walk away, but I can’t.

  ‘Yes, this is mine,’ I say, taking the diary from him, and thank him. I take a ten-rupee note out of my wallet and hand it to him. He smiles, thanks me and walks away. I clutch the diary and wait on the side of the pavement for an auto. The sides of the pages of the diary crumble in my hands and are reduced to ashes.

  The sun has come out and I start to sweat. I look at the diary. It has nothing written on the cover, except the year—2010—which is faded. There is no auto in sight. I sit on the pavement and flip through the contents. It is nearly full. The handwriting is not the best, but it is neat and deliberate. The first few pages are damaged beyond recognition. The top-right corners of the pages keep crumbling into charcoal.

  I stare at the burnt diary. This is the diary of someone who must have gotten seriously hurt in that day’s blast, I think. Not many people survived the blast; I was one of the few who did. The diary is in bad shape. It doesn’t look as though the person to whom it belongs would have survived the blast. I open the first unburned page. There is no name.

  Just the initials—RD.

  ‘You’re late’, Shrey looks at me and says.

  ‘I know. Got stuck,’ I say. I clutch the diary inside my office bag. It is still there. I have kept myself from reading it.

  Shrey and I had been to the same college, Delhi College of Engineering, now rechristened Delhi Technological University. We had a crazy time there. It was during those days that I had started dating Avantika. She was studying at Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC) and was even then as lovely. We have a come a long way from then. It’s been many years now. Man! I almost feel like a granddad.

  Anyway, between Shrey and me, he has always been the bright one. My mother loves him and all my ex-girlfriends have always found him very attractive. Clearly, I don’t see what those girls did. Well, Shrey is tall, dark and fairly handsome. His hair is like thin noodles like those African-American disco dancers and it gives him character. The most striking thing about him is his disregard for the impossible. There is nothing in the world he thinks he cannot do. His overconfidence makes him almost cocky. In one crisp sentence—He is a freak.

  He has lived in Paris, Goa and other places in strip clubs and with beautiful women for quite some time. After a lot of sex with random European women, he thought he should slow down. And so, he flew back to Delhi. As soon as he did that, he wrecked my life. I was working with American Express and writing books in my free time. The books were doing fairly well and my life was perfect. But, as always, he had different plans for me. And, like a fool, I followed what he said.

  A month later, we started our own venture—a publishing house. Starting Chrome Ink Press was his crazy idea. Despite everything, I know this guy is really talented, because I am now making more money than I would ever have had in my old job. Yes, it is hard work in a way, but it’s amazing.

  But today, I am in no mood to reflect on how my life has changed ever since Shrey decided that my old life was not the life I should lead. Right now, the initials ‘RD’ are troubling me. My worst fears, the recurring dreams, have just come true. Someone died that day, someone that could have been me. And I have his or her diary in my hands.

  There are about a million mails in my inbox but I couldn’t care less about them. I take the diary out of my bag and put it inside the first drawer of my table. The burnt edges make me shiver. The hand that held it that day must have been torn apart. The hand may’ve belonged to one of those bloodied faces that had asked me for help that day and for whom I did nothing.

  ‘So? Still haunted?’ he asks.

  ‘Haunted?’

  ‘The blast, Deb. Avantika told me. These bloody terrorists! Why can’t they just go home and fuck their wives and sleep peacefully? What’s even more surprising is that no one has come forward to claim responsibility. I think it’s the goddamn government,’ he says, his brain running ahead of himself.

  ‘Government?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes! With this whole Anna Hazare protest, maybe they’re just saving their ass. They are taking our minds off the protests and the agitations. A few people killed here and there don’t matter, do they?’ he says with absolute conviction. I am sure he heard this on some news channel. It makes some sense, though.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Oye, I need to leave to meet someone from the Times. Will you be able to handle everything here?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes, I will.’

  That is our code for a date. We have a few people working under us and we don’t want them to think that we go out during office hours f
or movies and dates. Because that’s something we do a lot! So whenever we have to go out, we say we have to meet ‘somebody from the Times’. I wave him goodbye, he checks his noodle hair in the mirror and leaves.

  There is not much work. There is never much work. I sit in front of the laptop and check my Facebook account. Facebook is boring when you’re dating the prettiest girl there will ever be.

  I don’t want to, but I still end up doing what I’ve been avoiding since morning. I fetch the diary from my drawer and open it.

  RD.

  I turn over to the first page. There is a short note. I close it immediately. I am not supposed to read it. I am supposed to return it to the rightful owner, but the rightful owner is probably dead. I open the first and the last pages of the diary and look for an address. There is none. It leaves me no choice. I start to read it.

  15 June 2010

  ‘Just as she walked past me, I felt the world come to a standstill, the birds stopped chirping, the wind stopped blowing and the sun stopped shining … It was only her, it was only me.’

  She looked beautiful. I see her with other guys and I feel envious. I’m sure no one around her likes her as much as I do. It’s been a week since I first saw her, and she only looks more beautiful every time I see her. I saw her at the water fountain today. It made my day.

  I wish to see her again tomorrow.

  Okay. Now, I cannot stop. Personal diaries have always been a weak point for me. Avantika and I had one of our biggest fights when she did not let me read hers. The only part I was interested in was what she thought about me in bed, whether I was bigger than her previous boyfriends, whether I was a better kisser … That sort of stuff. Well, after a lot of histrionics and girlish tantrums, she let me read it. I just read the words big and fabulous somewhere in the paragraphs and I was happy. I’m sure she added them after I told her I wanted to read the diary. She threw away her diary the very next day. There are certain privacy boundaries that even people in relationships shouldn’t cross. Like Facebook passwords, mail passwords and personal diaries.