If It’s Not Forever: It’s Not Love

by Datta, Durjoy

  For the first time since I have known about him, today I feel like asking Ragini to leave Nigel. Love is about accepting the person as he or she is, not changing them. Nigel is in love with what he can make of her, in love with what he can change her into. True love means not having to pretend ever. I wish she understands that. Better sooner than later. Before she loses herself in the process of being in love with him.

  I wish I could see her tomorrow.

  The Next Trip

  None of us is interested in going on a twelve-hour drive again. We’ve had enough of fighting with the gear box and the brakes of Shrey’s car. It doesn’t look like it can take any more. We check on the Internet and the drive from Gandhinagar to Mumbai is not a pleasant one. So it’s finally time to dump the car—something that I have wanted to do ever since the trip began. Shrey and I decide that we’ll leave the car in Gandhinagar and take the night train to Mumbai. It’s an overnight train so it will not be too uncomfortable either.

  ‘Which is cheaper?’ Tiya asks while we discuss the pros and cons of the train over car.

  ‘The car,’ Shrey answers.

  ‘So let’s take the car, no?’

  Tiya is slowly running out of money and the train tickets booked in Tatkal will be an even bigger expense for her. Renting that exotic bike in Haridwar seems to have cost them a lot. Meanwhile, I have hardly spent anything out of the ten thousand bucks I started with—just CNG, food at local dhabas and two-hundred-rupees-a-night hotels.

  Moreover, our budget for the trip was a lot higher than hers. She is just a kid. And we had never planned to go as far as Mumbai. Anyway, Shrey handles her and tells her that eventually the whole deal with the train will be cheaper because we’ll end up taking more time to reach Mumbai if we take the car and might have to stay at a hotel midway. It’s amazing how she doesn’t let Shrey pay for even the smallest of her expenses.

  We go out for an early dinner, overeat and come back to the hotel with fat, bursting tummies. There are still four hours to go for the train and everyone is tired and drowsy, except Tiya of course. Avantika promptly goes to bed and falls asleep. For some reason, I don’t feel that tired. I am blank. Too many things have been happening in the last few days. So for a few moments, my mind decides to shut out everything. I leave the room and walk the corridors of the hotel. I stand at a window and stare outside. Suddenly, I hear footsteps coming towards me, and a familiar song.

  I turn around. It’s Tiya, in her trademark hot pants and loose T-shirt. It’s Shrey’s T-shirt.

  ‘Not sleeping?’ she smiles and asks.

  ‘Nope,’ I say. She takes out the earphones from her ears and shuts the music down.

  ‘Isn’t it bedtime for you?’ she mocks.

  ‘If you are implying we’re very old, it’s not funny.’

  Aww! Don’t mind. I was just playing around,’ she says. ‘I really don’t get the grown-up stuff that you guys do.’

  Suddenly, she is like a young kid caught in a boring web of old relatives in a family engagement function.

  ‘You’re not supposed to, Tiya,’ I say. ‘We’ve had our stupid days too.’

  ‘Oh, please. Just because I don’t get what you do and why you do it doesn’t mean that I’m stupid,’ she says with disdain.

  ‘Well, whatever,’ I say and we don’t exchange words for a while.

  ‘Best of luck with this whole dead guy thing,’ she says. ‘I hope that some day I get why you’re doing this.’

  She smiles and I smile back. I walk back to my room and close my eyes for a power nap.

  The alarm rings a little later. We call a taxi and hope we reach the railway station in time to catch the Garib Rath, which runs from Delhi to Mumbai, Gandhinagar being an intermediate stop. We huddle inside the taxi and start discussing the diary again, much to the irritation of Tiya.

  ‘I don’t know what the big deal is,’ Tiya says.

  ‘What?’ we echo.

  ‘What what? What will happen even if she fucking comes to know that the diary guy was a stalker and loved her. It’s bullshit,’ she says and goes back to filing her nails.

  All three of us look at her with a what-the-fuck expression on our faces and she responds with a fuck-you expression. Maybe it doesn’t make sense to her, but it does to us. Shrey takes the diary out and starts reading a note to make her understand. It’s amazing how Tiya is not moved by anything around her. While Avantika and I listen to him with abnormally high concentration, Tiya puts her shades on (even when it’s dark), plugs in her iPod and leans back into her seat. Her apathy towards the whole situation is astonishing.

  ‘Do you guys even know whom to meet in Mumbai? It’s not a small village, you know,’ says Tiya.

  We look at each other, a little embarrassed. We know it’s a long shot, but we still have to go to Mumbai.

  ‘We do,’ Shrey says and smirks.

  ‘We do?’ Avantika and I look at him, surprised.

  ‘Ah. You guys didn’t notice it, did you? Well, I did,’ he says with a very condescending expression on his face. I just knew he was hiding something.

  ‘Tell us, please?’ Avantika begs.

  He laughs wickedly and says, ‘Didn’t you check the contact person sheet back at the asylum?’

  ‘What contact person sheet?’ I ask.

  ‘The one with the details about the person concerned. It had the details of Ritam—his phone number, his parents’ address and the emergency contact number.’

  ‘Emergency contact number?’ says Avantika. I kick myself for not noticing it.

  ‘He had listed the emergency contact person as Sumi. I didn’t know who she was, but now I do,’ he says and waves the diary at us.

  ‘You noted the number down?’ I ask, sweating in anticipation.

  ‘Yes, Tiya did.’

  Tiya looks at him and takes out her cell phone. As Avantika, Shrey and I get into a discussion about who will call Sumi, Tiya dials the number.

  ‘Hey!’ she says. ‘Is that Sumi? Hi, I’m Tiya.’

  We look at Tiya in horror. How can she call her? Just like that?

  ‘Yeah, we got your number from where your friend’s sister, Nivedita, lives. Umm, yes, yes, Ritam, right. So we wanted to talk to you about Ritam. We are coming to Mumbai in a day or so, and wondering if we could meet. We have something that he might have wanted to give you … Yeah, yeah … we will tell you when we meet. Right. Bye. Will call you. Thank you so much,’ she disconnects the call and looks at us. ‘See! So easy!’

  She plugs the earphones of her iPod back into her ears, leans back and starts to hum the lyrics of the song playing. We are stunned. Shrey smiles at us and we smile back. This girl is shockingly crazy. Soon, the taxi drives into the parking lot of the railway station. We are just in time.

  ‘Forty-one, forty-two, forty-three, forty-four,’ Avantika reads out from the railway ticket once we get into our coach. Luckily, we got all four seats in a single compartment. The remaining two are unoccupied. It means no creepy men, crying babies or loud aunties around us. It’s already late and we are sleepy. Avantika and I bump into each other quite a few times while unfolding the white bed sheets and the blankets provided. There is something incredibly romantic about train journeys, especially the nights. Soon, the lights of the compartment are put out. Avantika and I have chosen the lower-berth seats and we look at each other. Suddenly, I am not sleepy. She stretches her hand and meets mine midway. Even though the train wheels make an overwhelming clanging sound, I can still hear my heart beat louder than that.

  ‘I love you,’ she whispers.

  ‘Come here,’ I say.

  Minutes later, she is on my berth, lying right next to me, sharing my blanket. The railway seats are really not that wide, so we cling to each other to accommodate ourselves. Not that we wouldn’t have done it anyway. We start to say every sweet thing we have said to each other over the last so many years, all over again. We stay up a while longer, just talking to each other, listening to our favourite songs on our
iPods and looking deep into each other’s eyes. I don’t know when I fell asleep, but when I wake up early morning, I find Avantika still safely tucked in my embrace. I hug her a little tighter and look at the watch. It’s just five. There are still a couple of hours I can spend hugging her. I kiss her on her neck and close my eyes. Life’s good.

  It takes us around eight hours to reach Mumbai. We reach in the morning and I don’t feel sleepy at all. Avantika just got a call from her office and she is not in the best of moods. They are missing her at work and it is affecting their project. I think it’s a ploy to get her back in the office. She is so attractive, after all. And her colleagues, well … they all are goddamn tharkis.

  ‘Should we call her yet?’ Avantika asks us.

  Shrey and I shake our heads. It’s not yet ten and that’s too early to call anyone.

  ‘Should we go to Mulund?’ Shrey asks.

  From Ritam’s contact details which Tiya had noted down at the asylum the number did not work but the address was there. Mulund, Mumbai. Avantika and I nod our heads at Shrey’s suggestion. It’s better than lying sleeplessly in our beds in the hotel. Anyway, I have deep hatred for the hotel where we’ve checked in. The per-night charges of the hotel go through the roof. Road trip rule no. 2: Never pick Mumbai, it’s too expensive.

  Tiya stays back at the hotel, while we take the morning local to Mulund. I have been to Mumbai before and the Mumbai local trains never cease to amaze me. I mean, there are just so many people. Osama could have hidden on the Bandra platform for decades and no one would have noticed him. Anyway, Mumbaiites are too busy to notice anyone. I have met some really pretty girls from Delhi who complain that they weren’t even given a second look by anyone in Mumbai. The city either has no eye for beauty or it has had too much of it.

  One thing is for sure, though. If you can live with travelling by Mumbai locals, you will love the city for its sheer energy and honesty. But if you’re a spoilt one from Delhi and love your spacious houses—with gardens and balconies, probably a couple of dogs—and long drives, you won’t find Mumbai exciting.

  Being brought up in Delhi, where shrewdness runs through the veins, you might see Mumbaiites as naive and innocent. No wonder models from Delhi, Punjab and Haryana do so well in Mumbai. We are one set of very wily, foxy people. My ideal city would have the roads, infrastructure, houses and girls of Delhi, the mindset and attitude of Mumbaiites and the weather of Bangalore. Oh, the Delhi Metro too, how can I miss that? And well, girls from Bangalore are pretty cute too, aren’t they? They’re usually a little too smart for my taste, but I only have myself to blame for being dumb.

  We get down at the station and take an auto towards his parents’ house. Somehow, we can’t find the place. We let the auto driver go and ask around. Nobody recognizes the address. We assume that the name might have changed. A little later, Shrey asks directions from a watchman of a nearby building. He points out to a broken-down building. It’s nothing but big stones and rubble. Shrey barks at him, and the watchman says that it’s been a year since the building was taken down because it was an illegal construction.

  We look at each other, exasperated. It could’ve been a sure-shot way of getting to Ragini. But it’s not written in the diary whether Ritam’s parents knew about Ragini. Our shot in the dark gets us nowhere. It’s like those notes are taunting us. They bring us that close and then throw us off. It’s irritating and it’s bugging. Somewhere in the back of the mind, we also know that there is a life at stake—Nivedita’s. Time is running out for her.

  Our shoulders droop. We don’t know what to do. Hungry and tired from the train journey, we enter a food joint nearby. We still have Sumi’s number, but we are too disheartened to call her right now. Plus, there is no Tiya around and we feel depressed. Usually, with her perky and effervescent nature, she keeps us occupied. Irritated but busy.

  ‘Who’s calling her?’ Shrey asks. ‘You,’ he answers his own question, pointing at Avantika. I do the same.

  Avantika has to call. Guys calling up and telling girls about their ex-boyfriends might be creepy. Dead ex-boyfriends—nightmare. Shrey and I really don’t want to get into conversations like that. We look at Avantika with eager eyes as she dials the number. She gets self-conscious, gets up and walks away. At a distance, she starts to talk. We get restless. The call lasts barely a minute. She walks back to us with a bewildered expression on her face.

  ‘What?’ I ask.

  ‘She’s at our hotel!’ she exclaims.

  ‘What? How? Oh.’

  Tiya. That girl is crazy!

  ‘Tiya asked us to reach the hotel. Sumi is there,’ Avantika says. Shrey smiles wickedly. His girlfriend or whatever is turning out to be quite a girl. But why would Tiya call her? She was least bothered.

  Anyway, my heart starts to pump like a fucking generator as we squeeze into an auto to rush back to our hotel. Mumbai seems to have more autos and taxis than there are people on the streets. And one can hardly tell if those millions of cars and autos are parked for eternity or stuck in traffic.

  No one says a word through the entire train journey back. We are not even tired any more. We grab the first auto the moment we’re out of the platform and jump out of the auto as soon as we get to our hotel. For a moment, we forget to pay the auto driver. Unlike auto drivers from Delhi or Bangalore (goons’.), these guys are sweet. We rush to the lift and reach our room in a flash.

  Words will again materialize into a face, into a person, the written word will be spoken, and our dead guy will be alive again through the words of someone close to him. The door creaks open and she is sitting there—Sumi—on the bed, with a tissue box in hand. Tiya is sitting at the television table, chewing her gum and is saying something. She notices us and stops speaking, points to her and introduces her to us. ‘Sumi.’

  Sumi looks up; the three of us smile and introduce ourselves. There is an awkward silence and I wait for Avantika or Tiya to break it.

  ‘He found the diary,’ Tiya points to me.

  ‘Are you sure he is—?’ Sumi asks and bursts out crying. I can’t think of anything to say. We sit around her and wait for her to stop crying. One tissue box after another, she uses up three. She sniffs, sobs and says something which we don’t understand and starts crying again.

  Are you okay?’ Avantika asks her as soon as Sumi stops crying. Her eyes are red by now and there are streaks of dried tears on her face. She is okay-looking, but is dressed sharply and looks smart.

  ‘I am fine.’

  ‘Do you want something to eat?’ Shrey asks.

  ‘No, thank you. Can I see the diary, please?’

  She looks at me, teary-eyed. I take the diary out of the backpack and give it to her. She does what everyone does. She holds it, runs her fingers over it, looks at the burnt edges, probably imagines what might have happened and then sheds a tear.

  ‘Where am I?’ she asks, pointing to the diary. I flip the pages and take her to the page where Ritam had first written about her. She is no position to read, so I read it out to her. She clutches my arm and grips it tighter every time Ritam writes anything nice about her. I finish and hand over the diary to her. She goes over those portions again and cries some more.

  ‘Tiya told me that you guys met Piyush too?’

  ‘Yes, we talked to Piyush,’ Avantika says. ‘He too had no idea that Ritam …’

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘He’s good. He’s working in Bhopal. He still talks very fondly of you,’ Avantika says. ‘He really loved you back then.’

  ‘I know he did,’ she says, and looks sad. ‘I was the one who came between them. They were the best of friends.’

  ‘It’s not really your fault,’ I say.

  ‘Piyush was always very jealous of what I used to feel for Ritam. He had stopped talking to him. That’s what I think, at least. Though I never told Ritam why Piyush had stopped talking to him. I didn’t want to lose him … I was too fond of him. I couldn’t have afforded to lose him, so I let the
misunderstanding remain.’

  She looks guilty. She wipes off her tears that keep trickling down her cheeks intermittently. I look at her closely and find that she is cuter than Ritam’s words describe her to be. As she wipes her tears with her hand, I spot a ring on her ring finger. She clearly doesn’t look married to me. She is too young.

  ‘When was the last time you talked to him?’ Shrey asks.

  ‘I had just shifted to Mumbai in October 2010. I had called him up the minute I landed. He took three days to call me back. He had never taken that long to call me back,’ she says.

  ‘Have you met Ragini?’ Shrey asks and it looks like he has been dying to ask that.

  ‘No, I haven’t and I didn’t want to,’ she says. ‘I was very excited about shifting to Mumbai. I had called him up that day to say that I loved him. When we had broken up, I’d never thought I would miss him so much. It was puppy love, after all. We were still in touch after school but I didn’t think we had a chance together until we were in the same city. When I got a job here in Mumbai, I thought things would change. But when he called back, before I could say anything, he told me that he was in love with Ragini. I couldn’t say anything I had planned to. After that day, I deleted his number from my phone and never called him again. It was very upsetting for me. He kept calling and texting me for a few days but I didn’t respond. I was trying hard to move on.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ Avantika says and holds her hand.

  ‘Never mind. Although he did call from an unknown number once and I picked up. It was about two or three months after I had first called.’

  ‘What did he say during that call?’ Shrey asks.

  ‘He said he was in Bangalore. He sounded really tense and sad. I had never really seen him like that. But I was busy, so I really couldn’t talk to him.’