Forever Is True

by Novoneel Chakraborty

  ‘Did you meet Zinnia ever?’ Prisha asked. It was an impulsive question, she knew. And she didn’t know why she had to ask it.

  ‘Zinnia?’

  ‘The girl you . . .’

  ‘No, I didn’t. Why?’

  ‘Nothing. By the way, did you talk to a doctor?’

  ‘I have an appointment this week,’ Saveer said and after a thoughtful pause, added, ‘Who sleeps under a bed!’

  ‘Let me know whenever you meet the doctor,’ Prisha said with motherly concern. She held him tightly and closed her eyes, making herself comfortable on his chest.

  * * *

  Diggy was irritated as he got out of the department store. Gauri had not only woken him up but also kicked his ass repeatedly till he agreed to go out and get her Maggi noodles. The stock in the house had depleted. He wasn’t her boyfriend that he would take care of her tantrums all the time. He was muttering to himself as he entered the lane to his apartment. He saw a car parked opposite the main gate. Then he saw a woman getting inside the car. Whether she was coming back from the small cigarette shop down the lane or the apartment ahead he couldn’t tell. But as she was about to lock the door, Diggy noticed something fall on the ground. She had not seen it. He raised his voice and walked briskly and retrieved a phone that had fallen on the road. He knocked on the car’s window. The woman rolled it down.

  ‘Excuse me, this fell down,’ he said. The woman took the phone.

  ‘How nice of you!’ she said.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Diggy smiled.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Digambar Sethia.’

  ‘Thank you, Digambar.’ the woman said, rolling up the window. The next second, she drove past Diggy. She is easily the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, Diggy thought.

  9

  Prisha couldn’t tell if her phone was actually ringing or if she was dreaming. She opened her eyes slightly and saw her phone flashing Saveer’s name. Her heart skipped a beat. She sat up and took the call.

  ‘Hey, what’s up?’ she said groggily.

  ‘How long does it take for you to get ready?’

  ‘What?’ she glanced at the time on her phone: 8 p.m.

  ‘How long does it take for you to get ready?’ Saveer repeated.

  ‘Umm . . . mmm . . . five minutes? But why?’ The moment she finished, Prisha heard someone honk loudly outside her apartment.

  ‘Did you hear that?’

  ‘Fuck you!’ she yelled and scampered off to the window.

  Saveer had told her that he had a meeting with a client in the evening, which might run late into the night. Prisha had skipped office to attend her lectures. She had come home and gone off to sleep after setting an alarm for midnight. She wanted to wish him at the stroke of the midnight hour. Prisha had seen him for the first time at Zinnia’s place on that day. And so much had happened since then.

  As Prisha looked down from the window, she spotted Saveer on his bike. He was carrying a rucksack and a saddlebag was secured to the back of his motorcycle.

  ‘Your time starts now,’ he said over the phone; he was grinning at her. Prisha washed her face, stuffed a few clothes into a small duffle bag, wore a cropped top, pulled on a pair of shorts and her sneakers, and dashed out.

  ‘What’s happening?’ she said, boarding the pillion seat.

  ‘We shall celebrate this special day in a special way,’ he said. Prisha put her arms around him and they roared into the night.

  They chatted for a while but mostly remained quiet during the course of the journey. She didn’t even ask him where they were heading. She only wished for the path to never end. How amazing would it be if I got down from the bike to realize that it’s afterlife . . . Prisha wondered.

  They stopped twice on the Bengaluru-Coorg highway. Once for refuelling and once to have dinner. Prisha was pleasantly surprised when she realized that Saveer had made the dinner himself.

  ‘Don’t you make me fall for you every day, okay?’ she said, coming close to him and biting his ears.

  ‘All right.’ He looked amused.

  ‘Listen to me always!’ she said, grabbing his T-shirt. They looked at each other fiercely. And they knew that they were desiring each other carnally in their minds. Prisha let go of his T-shirt.

  ‘Now tell me where we are going?’ she intentionally changed the topic.

  ‘You’ll see,’ he said. Few minutes later, they were on the road again, cruising on the highway. They stayed quiet. When two hearts are in love, silence gives voice to feelings. And Prisha was enjoying being kissed by those feelings, which she had conceived with him, within her.

  It was an hour to midnight when they finally reached their destination: Harangi Dam on the way to Coorg. Saveer parked the bike next to a big tree and unloaded their belongings. They traipsed down a pebbly path towards the calm backwater with Prisha lighting the way using her phone’s torchlight. Saveer found a supposedly safe spot and placed the bags on the ground. In the next half an hour, while Saveer was busy setting up the tent that he had brought, Prisha couldn’t believe that she had been this lucky. That after a life storm, a love rainbow was possible. She had moist eyes but she kept responding to Saveer’s questions, not letting him know anything. There are certain things that cannot be shared even with your soulmate. You have to wait for them to understand on their own.

  Once Saveer was done lighting the last scented candle inside the tent, Prisha crawled inside it. There was a cosy sleeping bag and love candles on four corners of it. Just like her, they too were burning bright. They talked for a long time, sipping red wine that Saveer had brought in his rucksack. Some time in between, an alarm went off. It was Saveer’s phone. He dismissed it.

  ‘It’s twelve,’ he said.

  ‘You had once told me that forever is a lie,’ Prisha said. They were lying inside the bag, facing each other. Their faces were lit up in the glow of the warm candle light. The scene looked right out of a fairy tale. As if it could not be happening as much it was happening.

  ‘And now I’m telling you . . . forever is true.’

  Prisha placed her palm on his forehead and ran down her fingers till his chin.

  ‘This forever?’ she asked softly.

  Saveer nodded. He kissed her hard and then said, ‘This forever, where the echo of this kiss shall reach. This is true.’

  Only Prisha knew how far the echo of the kiss went. Right into her. Where her soul was, creating ripples in the most beautiful way possible.

  ‘You know, the night Ishanvi had died, I had made a similar tent for her in our Mumbai flat.’ Saveer sounded forlorn.

  It struck Prisha like a slap. Was she everything that he couldn’t get from Ishanvi? She immediately dismissed the thought. Saveer never made her feel that way, nonetheless, it was something that always gnawed at her.

  Prisha pushed back Saveer gently. She didn’t want to discuss Ishanvi. Not now, not ever. She unzipped the cover of the sleeping bag and got on top of him. With an urgency, she took off his T-shirt. He wanted to slide his hands under her top but Prisha pinned them down.

  ‘Not tonight, Monster. You aren’t in control. Tonight, I’m the one in control.’ She smirked. Saveer folded his hands behind his head and readied himself for the show.

  Prisha bent down and kissed his forehead, his cheeks, his nose and then bit his lower lip, hard. It tore slightly and started bleeding a little, which she sucked out clean. With a devilish smile, she kissed her way down to his torso. Then she bit him there. Saveer caught her hand in response.

  ‘You aren’t allowed to move your hand, Monster,’ she said, giving him the I-will-eat-you-up-alive look, unbuckled his belt, unbuttoned the jeans and tugged them down.

  Prisha spread his legs and started caressing his groin.

  ‘Someone’s growing,’ she said, stifling a giggle.

  ‘With so much love, what else will that someone do?’ Saveer said.

  Prisha slowly pulled down his underwear. She grabbed his erect peni
s and started massaging its hard shaft. With her other hand, she drew goosebumps on his turgid balls with her nails. His penis immediately became stiffer.

  ‘Whoa! It seems like someone has recently read up on a few things,’ Saveer quipped, enjoying every bit of it. For him, it was a role reversal.

  ‘To catch a monster, set a monster,’ Prisha winked. She’d used her free time in college googling ‘how to give pleasure to a man’. And now it was time to regurgitate what she had learnt. Moreover, she had always resented that in giving pleasure Saveer was always ahead of her. Tonight, she wanted to catch up with him.

  The way she toyed with his penis—sucking, jerking it, points where she pressed hard and rolled her tongue over the shaft—he knew she was trying to edge him. When she licked his perineum, Saveer felt that he would come right then but she didn’t let him.

  ‘How does it feel getting a taste of your own medicine?’ Prisha asked with a naughty smile. Saveer glared at her and then leapt up and picked her up in his arms.

  ‘Saveer!’ she screamed with fear and excitement. He carried her out of the tent in his arms—both butt naked—and headed straight towards the backwater. Prisha told him to put her down but Saveer asked her to be quiet lest someone came up. He walked into the backwater slowly along with Prisha. Her body started shivering in the cold water. She held on to Saveer tightly as he kissed her trembling lips. His embrace provided her warmth from the biting cold of the water. And so much more, she thought.

  ‘Take me, Saveer. Take me now!’ she said. The urgency in her voice aroused him. And Saveer wasted no time in holding her tight and walking back towards the bank. With half of his body still in the water, he got on top of her and entered her. She plucked out fistfuls of dew-laden grass as the thrusts increased in intensity. Saveer grabbed her legs and put them on his shoulder so he could penetrate her completely. In the process, she clawed his back as much as possible as he kept thrusting her deeper and harder. Prisha knew that Saveer could climax any moment. When he came, she felt her soul shudder. They lay there for a while, cuddling. Two intertwined bodies, one coalesced soul, but they didn’t know that there had been a spectator to their act. And the person had a problem watching everything. The person had had enough of such fake possibilities that love promised to people.

  Saveer was the one who woke up first in the morning, naked inside the tent. He looked around. Prisha was lying next to him. Naked under a bedsheet. He started laughing looking at her. His laughter woke her up. Before she could ask him what was wrong, she got startled seeing his face. Prisha didn’t know Saveer was laughing at her because there was a black moustache drawn right under her nose. On the other hand, Saveer didn’t know that he had lipstick and mascara on his eyes.

  10

  Saveer drove faster than he normally did. He was quiet since they had washed their faces in the backwater. Neither of them had to ask who had done it and yet neither of them knew exactly who had done it? But how? And when? The last thing they both remembered was lying naked on the bank close to the break of dawn.

  Both of them were immersed in their thoughts. Prisha wasn’t clinging to Saveer the way she had last night. She sensed a leave-me-alone-for-sometime vibe from Saveer though he didn’t say anything out loud.

  It was only when he stopped next a small roadside dhaba for breakfast that Prisha decided to talk to him.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ she asked as they were served steaming idlis and filter coffee.

  Saveer looked at her and their eyes met momentarily. The first time that day since they had realized someone had played a prank on them while they were sleeping.

  ‘What did I do to deserve this for the last twenty-five years? And because of me so many people have been affected.’ He paused and added, ‘Affected is actually a soft word.’

  Prisha stayed thoughtful for some time. Then her face suddenly darkened. Saveer looked at her.

  ‘I forgot to tell you something. It is important and I don’t know how I didn’t mention it earlier.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I don’t remember the exact day but this was soon after I had spotted someone like you in the mall.’ Prisha paused as if she were trying to frame her words.

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘You’d messaged me one night to come over. I did but you didn’t show up. You only guided me to your room where you fingered me after blindfolding me. You were ordering me to do things through messages.’

  ‘You mean I was somewhere else and you were in my room?’

  ‘No! You were right there in the room, in spite of which you were messaging me, asking me to do stuff.’

  ‘Stuff like?’

  ‘Strip myself and . . .’

  ‘Don’t tell me you did it!’

  ‘I not only did that,’ Prisha’s mouth had gone dry, ‘but was fingered to an orgasm.’ She felt a knot in her stomach while confessing it.

  Saveer kept staring at his coffee. Prisha didn’t know what to say next. A minute later, Saveer said, ‘Except for the voice, was there anything else which led you to believe that it was me?’

  Prisha frowned. She thought hard but no matter how much she tried, she only had broken memories of that night. She shook her head. There was nothing else that she remembered.

  ‘Oh! But I woke up in my flat. When I asked my landlady, she said that I had been dropped home by a woman.’

  ‘Did the landlady see the woman’s face?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m sure this woman thing is an only an alias. There is a man behind it. The fact that he visited you in the hospital dressed as a woman confirms it.’

  ‘Or there are two people involved. A woman and a man,’ Prisha thought out loud.

  ‘Could be,’ but Saveer didn’t sound convinced. He gulped down his coffee and was about to get up when he sat back down with a thud.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I remember seeing the silhouette of a woman months ago when I had driven up to Nandi Hills one night,’ Saveer said, recalling the night when his bike had fallen on the ground and he had seen the outline of a woman in the glow of his motorcycle’s headlight. She was gone in the blink of an eye.

  ‘That was the only time? Are you sure you haven’t or hadn’t seen her earlier or later?’

  ‘Only time.’ The words barely escaped Saveer. ‘But there is another dot which, right now, seems to connect the previous dots.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I wonder how you were brought back to your house from mine. And how did we end up inside the tent when we had fallen asleep next to the backwater? More importantly, why did we fall asleep on the bank?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I think this guy, whoever he is, has been sedating me. And that night, perhaps you too had been sedated. And last night, I think the same thing happened.’

  ‘But you brought home-cooked food, right?’ Prisha said. Saveer gave her a look and she understood. It didn’t mean it could not have been spiked. And it further confirmed that the person had access to Saveer’s house. For a moment, Prisha felt scared. She wished she could simply vanish from that place with Saveer. Someplace, where there wasn’t anybody to upset their love story. The next second, she realized she was being wistful. Their best bet to stop all this was to get to the person.

  ‘I’m sorry I may sound insensitive,’ Prisha said, ‘but do you mind if I ask you how other people in your family died? Like I know how Ishanvi died. What about your best friend? Or your crush?’

  Saveer took a few minutes before he narrated how Aditri had died.

  ‘And what about the others? Someone whose death bothered you a lot?’ Prisha asked.

  Saveer’s mind started racing.

  * * *

  From Saveer’s memory

  His uncle and best friend

  1991 to 2008

  My best friend’s name was Piyush. We had been friends since I was twelve. It was the year after my uncle had suffered a cerebral stroke. In fact, I
should first tell you about my uncle and then about Piyush.

  Raghuveer Rathod, my uncle, had renounced the world at an early age. He was twenty-three when he had announced to my grandparents that he would become a sannyasi and live a detached life in some ashram in the hills. Although everyone, from my grandparents to my parents, objected as he was the youngest in the family but he seemed to be under some spell and was adamant to leave home. Nobody knew who had inspired him or ‘brainwashed’ him, as my father used to put it, into it. My uncle left and came back when he was thirty. I was around three or four years old back then. The images are pretty blurred in my mind. I remember he took my brother along with him. My parents told me that my brother was going to spend some time with my uncle. It was during my tenth birthday that I was told that he was no more. Now that I come to think of it, I was so young back then that I don’t even have any concrete memories of him. Raghu uncle had taken him a little too early. I felt sad when I got to know about his death but simply because everybody else was. His name was Veer Rathod. I don’t know how exactly he died. Nobody ever spoke much about him.

  Anyway, on my eleventh birthday, Raghu uncle was supposed to visit us with his disciples from the ashram. He had some work in the city. But news came that he had been bitten by a snake. Owing to the trauma, he suffered a cerebral stroke and since then has been paralysed. He is the only person alive in my family, but then again he isn’t really alive in that way, if you know what I mean. I loved my uncle. He used to teach me good things. And I missed him even though he would rarely visit us. I’m not sure how he is now. I haven’t heard from him for a long time now.

  It was a year later that I met Piyush in school. He was everything I was not back then. He was daring, rebellious, the teachers’ pet, good in studies and someone who was an example for other kids. For me, he was like a brother. Someone I could go to with all my problems because even though we were of the same age, he was more mature than me. We did our schooling together. He was a great emotional support when Aditri died. Without him, I don’t think I would have ever regained my focus in academic life after her death. Come to think of it, he was the one person who had been with me on every birthday of mine since the deaths started happening. Till, of course, I turned twenty-five. By then, I had lost everyone in my family. Piyush was working in Pune while I was in Mumbai. He had arrived on time for my birthday. We were supposed to catch up as we were meeting after almost a year back then. But since he arrived, Piyush looked disturbed. He looked at me as if I had told him something terrible. I kept asking him if there was something wrong but he didn’t say anything. Then he said that he was going to make a call as there was no network in my flat. When he didn’t return for over an hour, I got curious. Before I could find him, the security guard of my building rang the doorbell and informed me that Piyush had jumped off from the roof. I rushed downstairs and found him lying on the ground, his head squashed. There was a suicide note as well. It stated that he wasn’t satisfied with his career and had thus killed himself. His parents filed a police case refusing to believe that he had committed suicide. I was with them. Piyush wasn’t someone who would kill himself. In fact, he had such zest for life that others drew inspiration from him. How could such a man kill himself? When the handwriting on the note was tested, it turned out to be his. And thus, every other theory was put to rest.