Even if Avantika left me, I would tell her every day how much I love her-till my last breath. Ah! I am so in love with her. There are days when I just sit and stare at her. Those are the days when I feel really lucky. She is so perfect and so freakishly beautiful. Suddenly, I can’t recall the last time I’d told her that I love her. So I pick up the phone and dial her number.
‘Hey!’
‘Deb? I’m working! I really can’t have phone sex right now,’ she says very seriously.
‘Is that the only thing I call you for?’ I’m a little taken aback. When I had picked up the phone to dial her number, the only thing I’d felt was love, but she is branding me a lusty bastard!
‘Yes. When was the last time you called me and said something nice?’ she whispers into the phone.
‘I called to say that now!’
‘Of course you did,’ she says sarcastically.
‘Oh c’mon! I really did.’
‘Deb, you don’t have to lie. It’s okay. I know you love me. Yes, you try to get me naked half the time, but I love you for that too. You are my boyfriend and it’s always great to have a boyfriend who gets turned on by a mere touch. Makes life a lot easier.’
‘But I do love you!’ I protest.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ she says. ‘And yes, I might need to go out tomorrow morning to Mumbai for a couple of weeks. A project is stuck there.’
‘What? Tomorrow? For two weeks? And you tell me now? Tell them you can’t go!’
‘Just a few days, Deb. Okay, I really need to go,’ she says and disconnects the call.
Almost immediately, I find myself in depression. A couple of weeks without sex? I mean, love? No Avantika for the next two weeks? That’s disastrous! I haven’t learnt to be without her. She makes my life possible. This just can’t be. She will have fun in Mumbai and I will rot here in Delhi and wait for her?
I am angry and unreasonable. Well, she has work there … but whatever. I am not staying here and missing her. This is unfair. I know my senses are overreacting and I know why. I am restless to find everything about the guy. And Avantika is the only thing that has kept me and can keep me from thinking about it. I will go crazy thinking about that mysterious girl, the dead guy, and the burnt diary if Avantika goes away to Mumbai.
23 September 2010
‘I don’t believe in putting a timeline on love. It will happen when it has to. It doesn’t start on a specific date, nor does it end on one. It’s eternal.’
It had been five days that I had been waiting for her at the bus stop. Every morning, I woke up at six, took a morning bus to her place and waited for her at the bus stop. I had started to think that it was stupid of me … until today. Today was different. I waited. Like every day, I had woken up at six, put my best shirt on, sprinkled cologne all over, and waited at her bus stop from seven. At eight-thirty, I saw her. Her hair was wet and she looked fresh, like a drop of morning dew. As soon as she reached the bus stop, I waved a big ‘Hi’ and she acknowledged it with a lovely smile. We sat next to each other on the bus. I have stalked her for quite some time now, so I knew she could talk and she didn’t disappoint. And once she started talking, she just didn’t stop. While she talked, I told myself, ‘This is the best sight in the whole wide world.’
She told me about her days in Delhi and how much she missed them. She spoke about everything she likes about her city and everything she hates about mine. I listened. She asked me which school I was from and as soon as I told her that I was from a boarding school, her eyes widened and she begged me to tell her stories about my school. She told me that she has always been very fascinated by elitist boarding schools—Doon, Mayo’s, Welham, etc. I wished I could tell her that she was too fragile and too tender to be told stories from my boarding school. I still remember my first day. Mom cried a lot, but Dad was confident that it was the best for me. I had mixed feelings about it. I thought it would be exciting, but I knew I would miss Mom and her home-cooked food.
But soon, everything changed. I was twelve and I was being sexually abused by three older kids in the common bathing area. For about a week, I was constantly teased by those seniors. I didn’t bathe all of the next week as I was too scared to go anywhere alone. But one day, I saw them in my dormitory and I panicked. We were alone. The minute they came close to me, I picked a compass from my geometry box and drove it through the hand of one of the boys. I pushed it till it came out from the other side of his hand. The other two boys looked in horror and ran even as their friend lay on the ground, bleeding and writhing for help.
The school authorities got to know about the whole incident and all three of them were expelled the very next day. Mom wanted to take me back home, but I had a newfound confidence. Suddenly, I was famous in my boarding school. I commanded respect. People saw me as a guy who was frail and weak, but could still fight for what was right. I told Mom I would be okay and she wished me luck with tears in her eyes. Dad was proud of me.
It was one of the best days of my schooling life, but I couldn’t have told her about it. Instead, I told her about my best friend in school. I used to call him Pappu, to show him down, but he was the champion, his name etched on the achievements board of 2007 as the All-Ro under of the Batch. We were the best of friends—before we drifted apart.
We reached college and I didn’t want to lose sight of her. I wanted her to stay right in front of me, to look at me, smile at me and enrapture me with her silly, long tales of how her best friends ditched her, how her heel broke on an important occasion, and so on and so forth. I was so in love with her. We exchanged numbers, and I have been staring at it ever since. I couldn’t study the entire day. I was thinking about her during the classes, outside the classes, on my way home and till the time I started writing this. I am in love. It’s a strange feeling and I have never been happier.
I wish I could see her tomorrow
1 October 2010
‘Every time her eyes look at me, I am scared that she would see through me. I am scared that eventually I am not a perfect human being and, unlike her, I have flaws.’
It has been days since she gave me her number but I haven’t mustered enough courage to call her. She has been busy with her Western Dance practice for the college festival, three hours every day, in the college auditorium. I have watched her dance and she looks the happiest when she’s dancing.
Finally, after so many days, I caught her on the bus back home. It’s amazing how perfect she looks every day. She looked tired from her dance practice, but that didn’t stop her from talking. She asked me if I had a girlfriend and I blushed and shook my head. I didn’t take her question too seriously. She couldn’t have been interested in me. Or maybe she was. I don’t know. I dropped her home and wondered if she had dated before. I was already jealous, even before she could tell me about it.
I wish I could see her tomorrow.
It Gets Interesting!
It’s been four hours since I’ve been in office and I still don’t know how to approach it. Ever since Shrey and I had started working together, he has been pestering me to take a vacation. But I’ve always turned it down as we both can’t take leave from the office at the same time.
But when Avantika left this morning, I felt like going on a vacation myself. Not really a vacation, more like an investigative journalism mission sort of thing. It sounds super cool in my head, like what those men in Hollywood movies do. I just have to find out more about this guy.
All I know is the nickname of his best friend and where he did his schooling from. I have to know more. I rub my hands together in excitement and mentally start packing my bags for a road trip. I have been waiting for the right moment. I don’t want to sound like I have an agenda in mind. I don’t want to sound stupid going on a road trip to trace a dead guy’s girlfriend.
Shrey has been busy staring at the screen for quite some time now. He is pretty good at the number-crunching stuff and handles all the accounts for us.
‘Shrey, did we make any money las
t month?’ I ask.
‘Yes,’ he says with a smile on his face. These days, he answers gladly whenever I ask him anything about the sales of our books.
‘So, didn’t we decide we would go on a vacation when things started to look positive? I mean, I remember you saying that.’
‘You asshole! I’ve been saying that for ages!’ he says and looks away from the computer screen. There is a glint in his eyes almost immediately.
‘I am not saying that I want to go. I am just saying that this is what we decided,’ I say.
‘Fuck you, man. Let’s go! Like right now,’ he says and sits on his table. It’s the kind of reaction I always expect from Shrey He always overreacts, does something dramatic and immensely cool and then says something about sex.
‘Imagine, Deb! You, me, and loads of girls! Shitloads of sex,’ he says. There comes the sex part.
‘I am engaged. And nobody is sleeping with you.’
‘I just got laid a week ago. And, for your information, I would have had that girl under my desk if it were not for your stup—’ he pauses before letting the word stupid slip away. Good for him. ‘I mean—Avantika.’
‘She was seventeen, Shrey. Grow up. Date your age, man.’
‘Grow up? That’s what! She had grown up. Didn’t I show you the picture? The cleavage one?’ He comes near and thrusts his cell phone in my face again.
‘You’re a pervert.’
‘And you’re a saint? When was the last time you talked to Avantika with your eyes not on her breasts?’
‘Avantika is my girlfriend. I can stare wherever I want to,’ I protest.
‘Blah. You’re one horny bastard yourself and you judge me for who I sleep with? Anyway, that’s not the point, Deb. Let’s go out. It’s been so long! When was the last time we went out like buddies?’
‘Umm, three years?’
‘More than that. You have been seeing that hot girlfriend of yours for five! And we haven’t gone out since. Just you and me,’ he says.
‘Just you and me? Are you wooing me? You do know that I have a dick, don’t you?’
‘Yeah, I know. A small one, at that.’ He smirks.
‘Blah.’
‘Whatever. Go home and pack. We’re leaving in two hours. My car. It’s CNG-fitted, so our expense on petrol won’t be that much. And think of a place.’
‘I will,’ I say.
‘What’s our budget like?’ he asks.
‘You’re the baniya here. You decide.’
He sets us a limit at ten thousand bucks each and extra emergency cash at five thousand per person. I don’t get into his calculations. He says—just in case his calculations go wrong, we will come back when we run out of money. He tells me that the rule no. 1 of road trips is: you do everything on a shoestring budget and don’t spend a single rupee more than what’s required, even if it means sleeping on railway stations. Shrey has done a lot of backpacking around India and abroad, so he knows.
I don’t argue with him on things like these. As I said, he does things that sound cool. It comes naturally to him. Not deciding where to go while making a plan, not making a plan at all, risking a long drive on his broken-down car—cool things to do, things you only see people in movies do. Maybe he fakes his coolness. But if he does, he does a damn good job of it.
‘So? Two hours? Your place?’ he asks.
‘Sure,’ I say and we shake hands.
‘Don’t be late or I will screw you over. And you’ll be driving then.’
‘No way. I am not driving that shitty car of yours.’
‘It’s not shitty. It’s a vintage. You wouldn’t understand.’ He pulls a face.
‘I don’t want to understand. Bye now. See you then,’ I say and leave.
As I drive back home in Avantika’s car, I know where we are going—Dehradun. I feel a strange sensation when I hold the diary. I will be tracing the path of a dead man, who told me his story through these pages. I will live his life through these pages. It is exhilarating. Invasion of privacy, yes. But he is dead now! And who cares about privacy anyway? The thought that I will be at all the places where he has been and I will see the things he has written about is thrilling. For the first time in years, something other than Avantika excites me.
I pick up the diary and flip through the pages again. I realize that by now I know exactly what’s written where. For one last time, I try to find something that would lead me directly to the girl, or the dead guy, but I’m sure there is nothing.
I pack some essentials and a few toiletries in my laptop bag and leave my place. Over the years, I have learnt that taking too many clothes on a road trip doesn’t help. It’s better to buy ‘I Love India’ T-shirts along the way. Plus, with Shrey in the picture, you never know where you’ll end up, so it’s better to leave all your expensive clothes behind.
When I walk out of my apartment, I find Shrey already waiting for me in his death-trap car, which he’d bought six months back. I had tried to dissuade him from buying the piece of scrap that he calls a car, but he didn’t listen. It’s a 1989 Jeep with worn-out door knobs and a creaky suspension. He has spent a fortune trying to restore the car, a fortune he could have invested in a really nice sedan. Somehow, he doesn’t give a shit.
I envy people who don’t think about what others think. Caring about what others think is the biggest jail one can put oneself in. Shrey has never cared; he is smiling in that rotten cage of metal, like he has already planned things that would eventually land us in trouble. I see no baggage and he smells of cheap deodorant. This is going to be a long trip.
‘So? Where to?’ he asks.
I pretend to think for a little while and say, ‘Umm … err … Dehradun?’
‘Dehradun it is!’ he says, puts the car into gear. The car stutters to a start, clouds of black smoke splutter out of the rust-eaten exhaust pipe and we are off! He doesn’t even ask why I chose Dehradun. I don’t mind that too. I wouldn’t have had an answer and I don’t want to sound crazy. Sometimes, I am just scared how little Shrey cares about things. Not a single second thought before doing anything at all. I always feel a little old and docile in his presence. Like someone who has already lived the best days of his life.
An hour passes by and he still doesn’t ask why I picked the place. Maybe he bought that I’d picked a place at random. As we leave the city behind and reach the outskirts of Delhi, a sense of calm prevails. It feels great to be away from the hustle and bustle of the city and driving in the pleasant breeze. Now I get why people go on vacations.
Within an hour of leaving work behind, I already feel rejuvenated. I am sure Shrey feels the same because he has been looking at me from time to time and smiling. Either that or he has arranged for hookers/strippers at Dehradun. We make our first stop after driving continuously for three hours. I still haven’t touched the steering wheel and I don’t want to. I just don’t trust his car. It looks like a contraption to kill people really slowly and painfully.
‘Crazy, huh?’ he says as he orders mammoth quantities of food for himself.
‘What?’
‘This trip. Finally you have managed to come out of your girlfriend’s lap and into the real world.’
‘Fuck you.’
We share a muted laugh. It’s like we are back to our college days. Only that our topics of discussion in college used to hover around boobs and porn, while just yesterday I found myself discussing the Indian foreign policy with him. Growing up is a painful process.
Anyway, I order conservatively from the extensive menu of dals, chicken and rotis. There are still five hours of driving left and I don’t think I would get a decent washroom for miles. But, obviously Shrey doesn’t mind. He can go with a bottle into an open field and do the needful. I feel like a woman—clean and organized—after living with a girl for the past several years. Girlfriends tend to slowly turn you into a woman. You find yourself using moisturizer and lip balm after a few days. Shrey on the other hand, is very unkempt, and almost lives like a p
rehistoric caveman.
‘Avantika is the reason for the vacation, isn’t it?’ he asks.
‘Are you crazy? Well … Okay, just a little bit,’ I say and look at the car parked at a distance. My bag is still there. I feel a little insecure. There are no locks on his car and I don’t want to lose the diary.
‘You’re paranoid, Deb. Can’t you live just one day without her?’
‘It’s not that,’ I say and stuff a slice of carrot in my mouth to end the conversation. Shrey makes it sound very gay to be in love with someone. Maybe because he never found what I did with Avantika.
I try not to eat much, but the food is so delectable that I end up eating a lot. My stomach growls as we walk back to the car. The sun is about to set and the roads are getting deserted. A few taxis and a few trucks here and there. I’m a little worried as his car makes threatening noises every once in a while. Sometime later, I doze off.
‘Get up!’ Shrey barks into my ear and I get up startled.
‘Huh?’
‘We have reached,’ he says.
‘Already?’ I ask. It doesn’t look like I’ve been sleeping for long. I look at my watch and notice that it’s been four hours since we left Delhi. The drive is six hours long, but with Shrey’s car we had put our estimate at ten hours. I look around. It’s a deserted place with just one stand-alone motel. Hookers? In the middle of nowhere? I am exasperated and Shrey reads my face.
‘No, the car broke down,’ he says, his face smeared in grease and oil. Obviously. The car broke down.
‘Shit. Now what?’ I say. I am not shocked. I had prepared myself for it. I just hope it blows up after we leave and we have to hire a new car.
Shrey tells me that he has talked to the motel owner and he’ll arrange for a mechanic early next morning. And for the night we’ll have to stay there. I make a face but I’m not bothered. I desperately need a bed to crash into.
‘Tomorrow, 8 a.m.,’ the old man at the reception says and hands over the keys. We go up the rickety stairs of the old motel and reach our room. Everything is falling apart—the stairs, the doors, the walls. It’s a motel where truck drivers spend their nights and hence it’s at a bare minimum.
If It’s Not Forever: It’s Not Love Page 5