Losing My Virginity and Other Dumb Ideas

by Madhuri Banerjee

  Then she went back to business and I got a few phone calls from some friends from the animation class and some from a few clients who remembered. I didn’t have too many friends, unlike Aditi, who was always the toast of the town. I kept mostly to myself with my nose buried in some book and with ‘Wi-fi’ entering my life and apartment, the Internet would keep me busy for many hours on some new online course. I was a geek. I looked around my apartment and realized that even my TV was broken and I hadn’t got it fixed. I did not need to.

  I went into the kitchen to make myself some tea. I was out of tea. So I thought I would make myself some coffee. I was out of coffee. I shouted out to my maid, ‘Martha, where is the tea and coffee?’ I asked.

  ‘Top shelf, above washing machine,’ she replied.

  Now why would she keep it there, I thought.

  She entered the kitchen and explained as if she had read my mind, ‘I cleaned the whole kitchen yesterday. It was quite a mess from when you last tried to cook on Friday.’

  ‘I was hungry. I made daal,’ I replied.

  ‘Oh, that’s what it was on the ceiling!’ she mocked. ‘And for future reference, the tea is on the shelf next to the stove since you have a lot of chai and the coffee is next to your coffee machine.’

  ‘Yes, but I never use it.’

  ‘Because you’re too lazy to learn. And I make it for you.’ Oh, she knew me so well.

  Martha was always right. I didn’t know how to cook. Of all the things I had learnt in my life, cooking was not one of them. I hated cooking. I saw it as a part of being domestic, which I was not. My parents had often wondered how I would manage alone in Mumbai seeing that I didn’t cook, clean, shop for the house and barely knew some groceries and chemists’ numbers. But I told them the trick in running a successful house was to have a great manager. What Mom was to Dad, Martha was to me. My domestic manager. Which reminded me that I needed to call Mom. I dialled her number as I went in to my clean bedroom that smelt like lavender.

  ‘Many happy returns of the day, darling,’ said my mom on the other end.

  ‘Thank you, Ma,’ I replied, sitting on the bright blue couch.

  ‘Tell me, what’s new?’ she asked, stereotypically, hoping I would say there is a man in my life and give her hope that she might have grandchildren one day.

  ‘I’ve started a new diet with my new dietician,’ I said, full of excitement that was immediately punctured by my mother heaving a long sigh and saying, ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Mom,’ I said slowly as if I was trying to explain Quantum Physics to a five-year-old, ‘I need to be on a diet! I want to lose some weight. My jeans are not fitting me anymore. I’ve put on three kilos.’

  ‘Kaveri,’ my mother said sternly. She had named me Kaveri and decided that all short forms were an affront to the beauty of the name, and hence would not call me anything but that. ‘All you need to do is go for a walk once in a while and stop eating muffins. You’ll automatically lose weight. I don’t know why you spend so much money on all these people. You’ve been to some seven dieticians now.’

  ‘Five,’ I immediately corrected her. She was right as usual, but I didn’t want to let on and give her the power to be right. ‘But I need someone who can understand my lifestyle and yet give me a balanced and healthy diet.’

  ‘What healthy?’ my mom argued. ‘Eat an apple when hungry. There. Now give me ten thousand rupees for that information since you’re spending that much on someone telling you the same thing!’

  I had actually spent tens of thousands of rupees on different slimming centres and dieticians to curb the expanding waist that I had inherited from my mother. But I would always fall off the bandwagon when I became bored and would go off to have muffins at Coffee De. That made me feel better, but it put all the weight back on.

  ‘I have to go, Ma. I’ll talk to you later.’

  ‘You have a lovely day and remember I wish that you get married this year.’

  ‘Great. That at least gives me 365 days to find a man,’ I said cheekily and hung up.

  But I had decided, marriage or no marriage, tonight at least, I would get a man!

  Three

  Aditi and I generally met at the same bar whenever we needed a drink. It was called ‘Float My Boat’ and it had all these little boats as tables and everything nautical attached to it. But the reason why we liked this place wasn’t the ambience, which was strictly okay; it was because of the amazing cocktails the bartender could make for an extremely reasonable price. We never got bored of trying as many as we could till we were buzzed enough to take a cab back home.

  On my birthday, the bartender sent us a complimentary long, ice filled, pink drink. We toasted.

  ‘Cheers!’ I said.

  ‘To your resolve,’ Aditi replied.

  Aditi was a conventionally good looking woman. She had long brown hair, a slim figure and dark eyes. She could have passed off as a model if it hadn’t been for her very bad skin—she had pockmarks left from a severe case of chicken pox in childhood that no amount of make-up could conceal.

  We looked around and saw a few men at the bar and a couple sitting at a table. The men didn’t look interesting at all. They were the corporate types in plain blue shirts of various shades and grey trousers. A few even had laptop bags on the floor.

  ‘Well we can’t start with anyone here,’ I said breaking the silence.

  ‘Clearly not!’ she agreed. ‘What we need is a list of things that you do not want in a man,’ she said. I looked at her questioningly while she continued. ‘See everyone is going to say sense of humour and rich. But what you need to know is that every man does have a sense of humour and most men can fend for themselves at our age. So what is it exactly that you do not want and then eliminate those types of men. Otherwise we’ll end up like them,’ she said and pointed to the couple at the table that had, already bored with each other, started text messaging other people.

  I nodded to the group at the bar, ‘That for starters,’ I said with a grin.

  ‘No! Please!’ She stretched her words for effect. ‘No one wants that for starters. Maybe for dessert …’ she punned.

  ‘You know what I mean. I’m not like you. I can’t do with just anybody,’ I laughed.

  Aditi had a history. She had slept with some forty-two men and then lost count. She believed that men were only supposed to be used. They were good for only one thing and so she wanted to use that thing well.

  ‘Hey!’ she exclaimed. ‘That hurts!’

  ‘You know what I mean. I didn’t mean it in a bad way. I admire you for it. That’s why I’ve come to you for help.’

  I didn’t really admire Aditi for all the men she had slept with. I believed that there needed to be a better way to vent your day’s frustration than to pick up just any guy you knew. I mean, go to the gym, or get a massage or something. But Aditi had a different viewpoint. She believed that one day she would get married, and then she would be faithful to her husband forever. That meant at least thirty to forty years of being with only one man. So she thought she might as well have as many before she hooked up with the one. But by the looks of it, Aditi wasn’t planning to get married till she was fifty.

  My philosophy was different. I didn’t believe in infatuation. Infatuation, guised as love, made people lose focus. There are so many things one needs to achieve and one has got very little time to do so before old age creeps in.

  When you get involved with a man, half of your life is wasted in waiting for his call, then asking him to propose, then waiting for him to come home, and then wishing he was away. By the time you realize that love and men make you weak, you want to be single again, but by then you’re already in your early forties and have done nothing to show for in your life.

  For me, I had to be married to have sex. And marriage meant finding the One Great Love. I had always assumed that I would get into an arranged marriage, then fall in love with my husband and then be with him for the rest of my life. No infatuation involv
ed! And in the meantime, be as much as I can be, and do as much as I can do. And even though Aditi had found the idea boring, she had admired me for my resolve.

  All until now.

  My thirtieth birthday. I was not married. I didn’t have a guy whom I loved or was even remotely interested in, and all the suitors my parents had set me up with didn’t match up to the definition of a man, much less the One Great Love. I was slowly beginning to see myself as Mrs Haversham from a Dickens novel, who was alone and senile.

  I knew that Aditi was secretly very happy that I was leaning towards her philosophy, albeit a little late in the day.

  ‘Oh, hot guy, three o’ clock, entered,’ she said all of a sudden. And indeed there was a nice, clean shaven man in light blue jeans and a white shirt who had just walked into the bar. And right behind him was his friend, a nerdy guy in glasses, short and very unassuming. I immediately picked ‘the nerd’. He seemed as unsure as I was. Maybe we would have a conversation and be friends before we venture down the dark alley …

  However, Aditi had a different plan. ‘Go ask that white shirt guy out,’ she prodded me.

  ‘Are you crazy? He’s way out of my league!’ I screamed incredulously.

  ‘If you don’t aim for the stars, you’ll always remain a virgin,’ Aditi screamed back.

  ‘That doesn’t even make sense Adu,’ I said, laughing. ‘And besides, I think I would be better off with the nerd.’

  ‘The ugly boy there?’ she asked, shrugging her shoulders. I nodded. ‘Damn, girl, he’s a three pinter!’ Three pinter, of course, means you would need to be down with 3 pints of beer and buzzed in order to like the guy.

  ‘I see potential,’ I added my two bits confidently.

  ‘Okay, then go ahead. Make your move!’ She encouraged me as if she had just given me permission to marry her dog.

  At precisely that moment, my courage deserted me.

  I looked pleadingly at Aditi, ‘As you might have noticed over the past eight years that we have known each other, I don’t have a move!’

  ‘Fine, I’ll show you.’ She got up, straightened out her dress, picked up her clutch purse and walked to the bar, right next to where the boys were standing. Then she leaned over ever so slightly to call for the bartender while giving the men a glimpse of her cleavage. I watched the Master Flirt in action with a smile on my lips. I had seen this before, but never for a date for me.

  ‘Hi,’ she said to the bartender who knew us really well and was aware of her tactics. ‘It’s my friend’s birthday today and I want to give her something special. Could you please see if there is anything back there that could surprise her?’ The bartender nodded. ‘And I’ll have a whisky and soda please!’

  This time, the bartender raised his eyebrow. Adu gave him one of her famous stares. Then she turned towards the boy and said, ‘Nice shirt.’ And walked away.

  Back at the table, amply swaying her hips and crossing her legs when she sat down for the boys to see her long legs, she said, ‘Five minutes, and they’ll be here.’

  And they were. With the two drinks that she’d ordered. Aditi knew men as if she had studied the science.

  ‘Happy birthday!’ said the nerd holding out a drink for me. Aditi waved them to sit and the white shirt sat next to her putting her whisky in front of her.

  ‘That’s pretty hard liquor for a lady,’ he said.

  ‘I’m celebrating and need a buzz faster than these colourful drinks are giving me,’ she said flirtatiously.

  They introduced themselves and started telling us about their professions. It turned out that the nerd was from IIT. He was a computer code programmer or something like that. He said he loved retro music and kept giving me information about the bands as each song played through the evening. Aditi, meanwhile, and as expected, had hit it off with the white shirt. He was an RJ on a popular radio channel and was telling her about all the celebrities he had interviewed. They had a lot in common. I could see him as another potential number on her list.

  As for me, I didn’t feel the chemistry. The man was a bore. I felt I would just explode if I heard another fact about Duran Duran or Wham. And my morals came flooding back. I thought I would have been ready to give my virginity to just anybody. But that little voice in my head said that if I had waited this long, I could afford to wait a little longer.

  When the nerd tried to put his arm around me, I moved away slightly and picked up my drink and looked in the other direction. But men never give up, so he tried again. This time, I was clear in my communication, ‘Look, I can’t be touched. You see, I have a heat rash all over my body and my skin is extremely sensitive right now.’ From there the conversation took a downturn. Not that it was going anywhere anyway. All I wanted to do was get out of that place. I could see Aditi was having a good time. So I excused myself and told her to join me in the ladies room.

  ‘What’s up with you?’ she asked, as soon as we got in.

  ‘Adu, I’ve got a headache from all that drinking,’ I lied. ‘And that guy has a bad case of body odour. I’m just going to go home. But you chill.’

  ‘No, no, I’ll come home with you. It’s your birthday,’ she insisted.

  ‘No, seriously. I’m going to go home and sleep immediately. What’s the point of you coming with me then? We’ll catch up later this week.’

  ‘What about the mission?’ she asked with a twinkle in her eye.

  ‘Let’s work on that again soon, huh?’ I assured her with a smile.

  ‘Are you sure?’ she asked apprehensively.

  ‘Yah. Now go have fun. Call me later!’ I walked out towards the front door and she went back to the bar.

  As I walked back home, I realized that maybe giving up one’s philosophy wasn’t that easy. I was a traditional girl living in a modern system. I should have been proud of myself for sticking to my beliefs. I had seen how much trouble a man could bring to a woman’s life. Women had been trying to understand the opposite sex while pouring over girly magazines, having long discussions with each other in office loos, writing to agony aunts in magazine columns and even Googling on the subject—all the while pumping each other’s egos about the fact that they were far better and deserved much more. Why would I want to be like them now? I had always been unique and proud.

  But I knew the answer to that one already. Because no matter how much you achieved in life, a day would come when you would feel all alone in this world. And today was just that day for me.

  Four

  The next morning my dietician reprimanded me for having alcohol, muffins and coffee. ‘Coffee?’ I asked, and was told that it was a terrible addiction and if I wanted to lose any weight and make progress, I would have to stick to green tea. After taking my measurements and other indicators establishing that I was very fat, the dietician gave me a strict exercise schedule and a near starvation diet that I had to adhere to before reporting back in two weeks’ time.

  I’ve always had a love–hate relationship with my body. I’ve tried to love it enough to look like the model of a Cosmo cover, but ended up hating that it didn’t adhere to any of my diets or workout regimes. But I hadn’t given up yet. I still believed that if I needed to lose my virginity, I might need to lose my weight first.

  My mother’s words came back to me. I had been to five dieticians so far. From eating every two hours to having soy milk when I was hungry to only drinking lime water through the day and, the worst, to having juice made from vegetables thrown in a blender that would make my skin glow, I had tried it all. And no matter how hard I tried to hold up a diet, at the end of a gruelling week of starvation and workout, I would fall back on my wayward eating habits by taking a trip down to Coffee De.

  Then, as I walked back home after my appointment, I realized that if I walked all over Bandra everyday, I would get forty-five minutes of exercise and would save money from travelling in an auto.

  That little voice spoke again and I knew that wouldn’t happen for too long since most of my ‘resolves’ we
re broken in a few days. I recognized that the decisions I made myself were trashed as soon as I understood another viewpoint. I had lived life on the bench most of the time and I was happy about it.

  Suddenly, my phone rang. It was the Italian Embassy. I was told they wanted me to do some work for them and I had to go to their office immediately. I took an appointment to reach in about an hour’s time so that I could go home, change and make it there before they closed for lunch.

  Back at home I scavenged for my grey business suit, the one I always wore for interviews and the one that I noticed had now faded at the back. I pulled it out, rejected it, and for the next twenty minutes I took out every piece of clothing from my wardrobe to find the appropriate outfit to make a good impression.

  I have always been indecisive about clothes. Most of the time I was trying to hide my ungainly hips, so everything was oversized in my closet except for a few nice things that Aditi had picked out for me.

  I somehow fitted myself into a full sleeved, white shirt and black trousers and added small pearl earrings to complete the no-nonsense look. Then I marched right out and caught an autorickshaw. Half way to the embassy, I realized that the buttons on my white shirt were popping open and there was no time to go back and change! I desperately needed this assignment since I had no other way to pay my rent. So I bought a bunch of safety pins from a lady at one of the traffic signals and tried to put a few on my blouse but it ended up looking all lopsided while the driver had a field day watching me in his rearview mirror. When I got to the embassy, it had closed for lunch but I was shown into a room where there were some people waiting for me. I was sure it would be another brochure translating assignment and wanted to take their work and leave quickly.