by Durjoy Datta
Daman
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected] listen daman. it’s good to hear you are doing fine. but i have put the accident behind me. we don’t need to be friends. we don’t need to ‘catch up’. it was just an unlucky car ride. please don’t mail me in future. take care and take your pills. also i’m sorry again. bye. have a good life.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
I tried not mailing you. It’s been six months since your last mail. This might be my last mail to you as well. I just wanted you to drop in to this link—http://bit.ly.rytm. I started writing a couple of months back and some of my posts are getting traction. I took the liberty of using your name and mine but it is all fiction, don’t worry. I keep clarifying to people if they ask. Let me know if you read them?
Bye.
She hadn’t replied to his mail. There were a few other mails he had sent after his last but they sounded desperate. He had deleted them in the course of time so he wouldn’t have to read them.
He logged out of his mail and started browsing through random blogs to take his mind off. He was reading an article about how goldfish flushed in the toilets grow really monstrous in the open lakes, often invading entire water bodies, when his shoulder was tapped.
‘Hi.’
He turned. ‘Hey?’
‘I’m sorry for intruding. Ummm . . . I have been watching you for the past hour and I was wondering if you’re Daman? Are you? YOU ARE! Aren’t you?’
It took him a split second before he nodded. He wasn’t sure how to feel about it—a little proud, a tiny bit bothered, a part of him even thought it could be a prank. He had seen the girl walk past the coffee dispenser about twenty minutes ago.
‘Oh. Do you mind if I sit here?’
‘Sure.’
‘Do you come here often?’
‘Sometimes, yes,’ he said, wondering if this was supposed to be a long conversation or short, an exchange of ideas or small talk.
‘I’m sorry I’m intruding on your space.’
‘No, it’s okay. Tell me?’ said Daman, lowering the lid of the laptop.
‘Actually, I read your book a couple of weeks back. It was good!’
Thank God! Daman smiled.
‘It was recommended by a girl who followed your posts on Facebook. She really loved them.
She told me you had written a book stringing them all together after an editor spotted you. That I thought was really cool. Now how often does that happen, right?’
He felt tiny bit proud that this girl—she was beautiful and smart—was a reader of his. The girl continued, ‘I’m also a writer of sorts. Well, I don’t know if I can call myself that yet. I write blogs and poems. My friends tell me they are good. Oh. Don’t worry. I won’t ask you to read them or review them. I know how irritating that can be for you. But I was intrigued by how you started out.
So I picked up the book.’
‘That’s nice of you,’ said Daman, not knowing what else to say.
‘Oh no. The pleasure was all mine. But can I ask you a question? If you don’t mind?’
‘Sure.’
‘Umm . . . my friend sent me a few posts from Facebook as well, the ones she copied on her laptop.’
Jayanti had asked Daman to delete the posts once the deal was signed but they had been copied and shared on other platforms before he could do it.
Daman said, ‘And you find those posts better than the book, I suppose?’
‘You have been told that before?’ asked the girl, curious and miffed that he’d wrested away her critique.
‘Yes, I have been told that. Many reviews say the same thing. People who had read my posts don’t actually like the book. But people who hadn’t don’t really see the difference. Many of them even like the new Shreyasi.’
‘You don’t seem too happy about it?’
‘Because I’m not. Because I could run a marathon on burning coals to get the first draft published instead of the crap that’s The Girl of My Dreams right now. But the book is apparently working so I guess it’s a good thing. Maybe I will be more careful with the next one,’ said Daman, sighing.
‘But does this kind of this happen a lot?’
Daman frowned. ‘Editors making the writers change the characters they write?’
‘No!’ She laughed. ‘Like people coming to you and telling you they have read your book? It must, right?’
‘It hasn’t really happened except once,’ he said.
‘What was it like?’ she asked, inching closer.
‘The reader actually met my sister, not me,’ said Daman. And then said with a finality, ‘It was okay. She ended up bothering my sister a bit. So I am not sure how it was.’
She frowned. ‘Shouldn’t you be more respectful towards your readers? She must have been in love with you and your work and wanted to be closer to you. Shouldn’t you be thankful for that?’
‘Maybe.’
‘That’s better. I take offence if a writer makes fun of his own readers,’ she said.
‘My bad,’ said Daman and raised his hands in mock surrender. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t ask your name.’
She was Reya, a first-year literature student, Hindu College. Daman reintroduced himself and she laughed at his cheekiness. They walked to the coffee dispenser, talking.
‘I don’t know if this writing thing is even a real dream, I just like writing,’ she said. ‘You’re lucky though. Um . . . not lucky, I guess talented is the right word.’ She offered him a coffee and he refused. She continued, ‘There was something I was curious about.’
‘What?’
‘Is the main character of the book, Shreyasi, inspired by someone?’
Daman shook his head. ‘Both Shreyasis—the one in the book and the one I wrote about in my
Facebook posts—are fictional. The one in the book is inspired by my editor’s wet dream of turning every book into a formulaic bestseller. But the one I first wrote was totally fictional.’
‘Then I have another question, if you don’t mind. What would you choose? The old Shreyasi and a flop book? Or your Jayanti Raghunath’s Shreyasi and the hit book like it’s right now.’
Daman weighed the options. The pause made the answer obvious.
‘You don’t have to answer that,’ said Reya. ‘Maybe you didn’t like the previous Shreyasi that much?’
‘Umm, I actually did—’
‘It’s okay. Let’s just assume that Jayanti Raghunath is a whore, okay?’
Daman didn’t know what to say to that. But soon, they were both laughing. They were sitting on either side of the corner table of the reading room, allowing themselves long stares at each other.
Daman had sensed where it was going. Reya was beautiful! Slender, long hair streaked in dark brown and blue, a perfect tan, and she was interested in his writing. For the next half an hour, they talked about whether writing can be taught, and if a time will come when books will be a thing of the past and writers will be confined to telling entire stories in 140 characters, amongst other things.
‘Daman? It was so nice to meet you. But I have to go now. Do you mind if I ask you for your number? So we can catch up later?’ she asked, getting up, collecting her books.
Daman nodded and rattled off his number. He wrote down hers.
‘But that’s just nine digits?’ Daman noted.
She peered into Daman’s phone and giggled. ‘There’s a double 22 at the end.’
‘Oh. My bad.’ Daman corrected the mistake and saved her number. He walked her to the exit of the library. Slowly, the words dried up and there was an awkwardness in the air. There was an all too obvious sexual tension between them but both of them knew it would head nowhere. He turned towards her as she waved down an auto.
‘Hey? There’s this book launch on Saturday at Oxford Bookstore for The Girl of My Dreams.
You should come.’
‘Is your girlfriend coming?’ sh
e asked with a faint, naughty smile. Daman smiled back at her.
‘Careful what you wish for. I might just come and get a book signed,’ she said.
They hugged, wished each other the best of luck for their writing. The auto drove off. Daman went back to his desk thinking about the girl. He opened the lid of the laptop and loaded Microsoft word. His thoughts still lingered on her. He found himself smiling, thinking of the conversation; it played on a loop in his head.
And then, it struck him.
His smile evaporated. How did she know? Did I tell her? He went through the conversation again his head. He had never told Reya what his editor’s name was and yet she knew. Had she read it in a newspaper? Curious, Daman dialled the number the girl had given him. The voice recording from the other side told him the number didn’t exist. Fifteen minutes of googling ‘Reya,
Hindu College, first year’ yielded no results. Intrigued, he checked the entry register of the British
Council. No one with the name Reya was in the register. There was one name written in the most beautiful cursive handwriting that stuck out amidst the hurried scrawls.
Shreyasi.
The last three books she had issued were Jerusalem: The Biography; India’s Wars: A Military
History, 1947–1971; and The Algorithm Design Manual. This made no sense.
He fumbled with his phone, his fingers trembling. He typed out a mail to Shreyasi, something he hadn’t done in almost a year.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Are you back???!?!??!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!
Daman
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
YES. And now you know what I look like. Sweet dreams.
11
Shreyasi Bose, twenty-six, had just cleared the empty beer bottles, used glasses and plates left strewn over the couches, tables and floor of the living room of her sprawling three-bedroom house in East of Kailash. She stacked the bottles near the door and dumped the rest in the sink as quietly as she could. She didn’t want her husband to wake up from his drunken slumber. Once done, she lit a few scented candles to ward off the smell of food and alcohol from the house. The tub in the bathroom was now filled with hot water. She latched the washroom door and slipped out of her clothes. The bathroom was her sanctuary whenever her husband was back. She smiled at her reflection in the mirror. Her breasts were firm and her thighs were getting muscular and shapely from the squats she did every morning. Her hamstrings were still sore from the jumping lunges she might have done too much of. From the medicine cabinet she took out a bottle of bath salts her husband had bought for her from Jordan (or was it Chile?) and added a handful to the water. She dipped a toe in to check if the water was hot. Then slowly, she slipped in. The water was warmer than she had expected. She liked it. She lay there, submerged, with only her nose protruding out of the water and closed her eyes. The tiredness seemed to wash away.
It had been a long day. Back from his six-month-long assignment, her husband of nearly two years had asked five of his friends and their wives to watch the Indian Premier League match at their place without consulting her. The food and the alcohol were ordered in but she’d had to do all the serving while her husband lay spreadeagled on the sofa and guffawed loudly with his friends. She had asked him to help her just once when the wife of one of his friends had chipped in,
‘He’s away at sea for six months. Let him rest a little.’
Shreyasi had wanted to break the bottle on her head, shove the rest down her throat and watch the blood gurgle out and choke her. And what do you think I do for those six months, you whore!
Out of spite and habit, Shreyasi later flicked the woman’s phone while she was in the washroom.
She connected a little OTG connector and a tiny data cable to the phone and dumped the data from the woman’s phone into hers. She kept the phone back where she had picked it up from. While flicking through the data she found a string of emails and pictures the woman had sent to her boyfriend. Shreyasi saved them all in a folder and named it.
‘You’re such a nice couple,’ Shreyasi had told the woman. ‘May nothing come between you guys.’
The woman had clutched her husband’s arm and smiled. Had the woman not been nice to her for the rest of the party, she would have sent those pictures and sexts to her husband and ruined their marriage.
Shreyasi never trusted the words that came out of people’s mouths. She believed what people wrote or texted or mailed or WhatsApped, things they hid behind a password, were what revealed the true self of a person.
By the time they wound up, she had something on everyone who had come to the get-together in the little folders on her phone. The folders were organized alphabetically with chronological details—with the addition of the eight people from the party the number had swelled to 643 names/folders. The more people get drunk and tired, the less careful they are with punching their passwords in. Once you have their phones, it’s a matter of a couple of minutes, an OTG connector and another phone. That’s it, all their dirty secrets they hide behind a four-digit password—phone logs, pictures, chat histories, mail, browser histories—are yours. It is so simple, it is laughable, like taking candy from a kid. While her husband’s friends had all sat laughing and talking like their lives were so perfect, she knew who was cheating on whom and with whom, who had unpaid bills, who had had an abortion, who was bulimic and who made his wife fuck him with a strap-on. She knew everything; she had always made it her business to know everything. Because, who knows?
There might come a time when she might need this information. It was a wonder she had nothing against her beloved husband of two years. This marriage would have never happened if she had found something against him like she had found against all the prospective suitors she had met before him. But her husband was careful . . . and her parents’ patience had worn thin. There was no way out. The doctors had given no hopes of Daman waking up from the coma; there was no point waiting, he was as good as dead; eventually, she agreed to the wedding. But Daman did wake up . .
. and he remembered a name. Just her name—Shreyasi.
She picked up one of the little burning tea lights from the edge of the bathtub and put it on her palm. The aluminium casing was scorching hot and it singed her skin. Lazily, she flicked the wick with her index finger before extinguishing it. She hadn’t noticed how cold the water had got. Her shrivelled skin prickled with goose pimples. She stepped out of the tub and towelled off the water from her skin. She put on her SpongeBob night suit she had bought only a week back. It brought a smile to her face.
She walked to the living room next, switched on the TV and got comfortable on the couch. She took out her phone and began to scroll through hundreds of folders of people’s data she had downloaded from phones she had stolen or borrowed over the years—of her teachers, colleagues, friends, even strangers. She could wreck hundreds of relationships, jobs, friendships and lives with the press of a few buttons.
While sifting, she found one of the first folders she had ever made. Rudra. The boy with floppy hair and the most charming smile, her first true love, her only love before Daman. She was in eleventh standard and he was a new admission. He had shifted to Delhi from Bengaluru and had a peculiar accent which everyone made fun of, but not her. The first time she saw him she knew they had to be together. The voice inside her head asked her to possess him, to love him, to take care of him, to save him from the world and so she did. What had she not done for that rotten boy? Rudra would not have become the prefect had she not planted porn CDs in the bags of the entire Student
Council. He would have never made it to the volleyball team had she not mixed ground glass in the team’s drink. And yet, he had called her crazy when she first professed her love for him.
Of course, he saw the truth in Shreyasi’s love and came around. He told her he loved her, and because he loved her, she let him put his soft hands under
her skirt on the school bus every day. But when she thought all was good, he had dared to go against her and talk to Kriti. She did what any girl in love would do. The last day before the summer vacations, she called Rudra posing as Kriti
to the men’s bathroom in the far corner of the basement where no one ever went. It was four days before anyone found him locked inside. He was emaciated and was found eating his own shit. Kriti was expelled and Shreyasi never saw Rudra again in school. Rudra lost two years of his school.
The last time Shreyasi checked his profile, he was in Coimbatore, floundering in an MBA college.
First loves are always complex, Shreyasi thought.
She exited the folder. She had just kept her phone aside when her husband came stumbling into the room, rubbing his eyes. Shreyasi asked him if he was okay. He smiled at her, his eyes glinting naughtily. He was still drunk. For the last six months, she had slept alone in her bed (their bed) with thoughts of her and Daman. But now her husband was here. Her husband stretched his hand, that silly smile still pasted on his face. Shreyasi switched off the television. She gave him her hand and realized how cold her own hand was. He led her through the corridor to their bedroom. She slipped into the blanket, her body turned away from him, almost teetering on the edge of the bed.
She heard him fumble with his clothes before clambering on to the bed. Not long after she felt his naked body against her. He turned Shreyasi towards him and put his lips to hers. He pried them open with his tongue. The stench of alcohol in his breath was overpowering. ‘I love you,’ he said.
You’re lying. I know. There’s someone. I just haven’t found her . . .
His tongue inside her, she tried to think of the time she was in love with her husband. All she remembered was that it wasn’t for a long time and she had no memory of it now. However little she liked him was washed away slowly. Now she only remembered her festering loneliness, the sheer lovelessness and the growing resentment of the last two years of their marriage. His coarse marine-engineer hands were inside her night suit. Slowly and clumsily, he got her naked, kissing her all the time. She bit him on his lip and tasted blood. It didn’t deter him. His hands went south and found her dry and cold. She thought he would react adversely but instead he winked at her and crawled down inside the blanket. He’s drunk. She felt his lips against her dry self. He spat and licked. She moved her head to the side. On the bedside table, lay a copy of Daman’s book, The