How About a Sin Tonight?

by Novoneel Chakraborty

  ‘Nish’ brought back memories of Balloo to her—her one friend in school with whom she experienced the first kiss of her life. Did he also love her? She would never know because Balloo had suddenly left. But, did he really love her? Then what about Rakesh? If he too loves her, and so does Rehan, and the man who stalks her harmlessly, then it meant that one person could be loved by many at the same time. So why can’t one person love more than one at the same time?

  ‘Anything but Nish,’ she clarified.

  ‘Then baby?’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘So here’s the thing—I have saved four lakh rupees till date. My mother said the engagement expenditure would be from your side.’

  ‘Engagement? I’m not even a graduate.’

  ‘Nobody will stop you from completing it. Anyway, the marriage expenditure will of course be from the girl’s side as per tradition. The reception however would be from my side. I shall use two lakhs for that and a lakh for our honeymoon. Mom is already talking to a travel agent for the best deal for three.’

  ‘Three?’

  ‘You, me, and my mom.’

  If people’s words were medicines, then Rakesh’s banter would have had the side effect of her throwing up, Nishani realized and said, ‘Don’t you think we are going too fast, Rakesh?’

  ‘Call me baby, please.’

  ‘Okay, don’t you think so…baby?’

  ‘It’s important to plan everything. You know my father isn’t alive and I’m the only one.’

  Her father was alive, but she still was the only one. She could have died of an emotional choke then and there but she held on somehow.

  ‘What I can’t understand is the need to plan everything right now. Why are we deliberately deciding a destination? Can’t we just wait and go with the flow instead?’ asked Nishani.

  ‘But you love me and I definitely love you, so what’s the point in waiting?’ Rakesh sounded confused and a tad disappointed. Nishani was about to retort when she heard a beep. It was another call. The name read: Shweta AD.

  ‘Rakesh, I will just call you back.’

  Before Rakesh could react, she was on the phone with Shweta.

  ‘Hi, how are you?’

  ‘I’m fine, Nishani. I wanted to inform you that one of the three shortlisted candidates for the sanitary napkin ad is you. Please confirm if you can come to our creative office in Mahim tomorrow around one in the afternoon.’

  ‘Count me in.’

  A week before, while traipsing in a mall with Rehan, she passed by an entourage of young people who were calling in youngsters for their portfolio for an advertisement. Stating she had to freshen up in the washroom, she made Rehan wait for half an hour during which she met Shweta who was one of the five youngsters present there.

  ‘But I don’t have any portfolio,’ said Nishani.

  ‘Never mind. We have an in-house makeup artist who will give you a touch up. Then you need to talk about yourself in front of our camera. And that’s it! Simple stuff.’

  She was thrilled to know she had already ousted a minimum of one hundred girls who were there to try their luck. Only Nishani was trying her intent. It was her first step towards a life where more and more people will thirst for a miniscule glimpse of her. And of course, it will be a step closer to Shahraan.

  Ecstatic, she called up Rehan instead of Rakesh.

  ‘Dude, I made it to the top three.’

  ‘Congrats! Guess it’s high time we partied at Matheran. Only you and me; what do you say?’

  Nishani went quiet with a sense of repulsion. People have a thing for destination. But, does love alter if destination alters? A thoughtful pause later, Nishani decided to give the guys what they didn’t want; a dirty weekend to Rakesh and lots of marriage planning to Rehan.

  Two months after Nishani successfully shot for the sanitary napkin, it started regularly featuring across television channels and on billboards at certain traffic signals in the city as well. Every time someone gave a second look at her on the road or elsewhere, Nishani felt fertile from within.

  Nishani shared the piece of news with Rakesh only once the ad was out. Rakesh was happy to know about it but when he told his mother, she took offense. ‘Sanitary napkin? What nonsense! Are you sure you want to marry her?’

  Rakesh suddenly found himself sucking hard on the nipples of shame.

  ‘What are you talking about? It was not a condom or a cheap viagra product that I was featuring in. Not even lingerie,’ Nishani chided him while savouring steaming noodles as lunch outside her office.

  ‘We don’t talk about sanitary napkins freely in our community.’

  ‘I hope the women of your community use them at least.’

  ‘Please baby, try to understand.’

  That’s what Nishani’s whole agenda was: to try and understand a relationship.

  ‘So what do you want me to do?’

  ‘I don’t. My mother wants you to stop all this advertisement business and focus on the job at hand. She has also asked for your kundli.’

  ‘I don’t know where my kundli is and I’ve resigned.’

  Rakesh’s jaw dropped hearing the latter.

  ‘What? Have you applied somewhere else? You should have told me.’

  ‘I have told you.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘The fact that I’ve done an advertisement implies what my desire is.’ It was a taunt.

  ‘I am sorry but I don’t get it.’

  ‘I want to be a movie star. You know who my dad was, right?’

  Shekhar Rai—he did know. But that was a matter of yore. And she now wants to be a movie star. A movie star! He could feel his mother’s hands throttling him to death for choosing Nishani.

  ‘That’s a dangerous and cheap line for girls. Forget about mom, I will never allow that to happen.’

  Allow! It was Rakesh’s good luck she didn’t stab the noodle fork into him.

  ‘You know how much I was paid for the advertisement? More than our three months of salary taken together!’

  The mention of money silenced his moral tempest like nature silences man’s arrogance with a calamity.

  ‘I will talk to mom once, tonight.’

  ‘I had to ask you something,’ Nishani wiped her mouth with a paper napkin and then said, ‘What do you think about a dirty weekend?’

  She didn’t notice any budge or twitch in Rakesh. With a mouth full of noodles he mumbled, ‘That happens mostly during monsoons when there’s mud all over.’

  ‘Idiot! A dirty weekend as in you and me alone and some sexual activity.’

  ‘I will talk to mother…’ He paused with one piece of noodle hanging out from his mouth like a tail.

  In the last few months, Rehan was busy touring with his rock band. Unlike Rakesh, who was like a bird who would sit on your balcony and shit loyally, Rehan was a passer-by bird who would shit only when nobody was watching. Whenever Nishani met him, she would sense a detached attitude in him. He would congratulate her if something nice happened but never encouraged or discouraged her to do anything. The only consistent thing in his behavior was a subtle persistence about sleeping together. When alone, Nishani used to wonder why couldn’t he tell it to her face. I want to fuck you. Period. Did he want her to say so, instead, in order to share credit of the act?

  ‘What do you want from me?’ She put it straight one day they met in Juhu Chowpatty. He wanted to sleep with her alright, but didn’t want any associated guilt. Like what he did with the last six girls, he would sleep with Nishani first—few times if luck was with him—and then cite an excuse and move out of the relationship, claiming to love her truly all his life or be a friend if she wanted him to be.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Rehan played it safe.

  ‘A long-time relationship or…’

  ‘Or?’ He sucked hard onto the straw dipped in the coconut.

  ‘Why do you need any options?’ Nishani threw her coconut away.

  ‘I only want to know what’s in you
r mind.’

  ‘Marriage,’ Nishani lied.

  ‘But I’m a Muslim and you are a Hindu.’

  ‘Then why are we in a relationship, Rehan, if you are so much into this religion shit?’

  Rehan had no answer.

  Nishani could have stripped him of his pretence and spit on his pathetic nude self, but she played on because all she was interested in knowing was why they were sharing time if neither wanted to get married. And one of them didn’t want the sex part either.

  He threw his coconut too and said, ‘Nishani, I believe in the physical expression of love. Not the emotional, spiritual, or the committal aspect of it.’

  ‘Hence your intentional mention of the dirty weekend almost every time we have met till now.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Now he was being honest, Nishani thought, and said, ‘What if I say my kind of love is about getting married first and then getting intimate? Whose kind of love do we as a couple give preference to? Yours or mine?’

  They could sniff the scent of a mutual break up in the saltladen sea wind.

  ‘What do you want, Nishani?’

  ‘What do you have, Rehan, apart from a circumcised dick?’

  Rehan dropped his eyes and with a laboured gait, went away. The moving away was symbolic, Nishani realized, for that’s what he had in his mind anyway.

  As she walked towards her Enfield, she saw a figure at a distance. A gaze later, Nishani waved at him. As a response, the man allowed the darkness to consume him totally.

  So it was Nishani’s flat where they were supposed to have their dirty Saturday night while her mother was gone for work to New Delhi.

  From the morning itself, Rakesh felt emotionally constipated. He didn’t know whether to feel happy that his girlfriend trusted him so much that she wanted to willfully surrender her virginity to him or should he be disappointed because he himself wanted to have sex for the first time in his life after marriage. He didn’t have the courage to tell Nishani, lest she thought he was a coward. It took five calls from her before he took one.

  ‘Are you coming or not?’

  ‘Baby, I am not feeling well.’

  ‘So, you are not coming.’

  ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘It is okay. I am coming to your place.’

  The line was cut. Rakesh went back to sleep—the best temporary escape ever conceived.

  Within an hour, Nishani was there. Dressed in a black tight tank top, blue jeans, and aviator glasses, she was looking highly desirable.

  ‘So, you are so sick that you won’t even smile seeing me?’

  ‘Sorry, baby. See, I am smiling,’ Rakesh beamed.

  ‘Now tell me, what’s the matter?’ Nishani pushed herself inside. Rakesh first closed the door and then came to kneel down in front of her as if he was her most trustworthy and benign servant.

  ‘I can’t do it.’

  ‘Can’t or won’t? They are two different things.’

  ‘Won’t, I mean.’

  ‘Why? Don’t I arouse you?’

  ‘Of course you do. I think you have it in you to arouse the whole world.’

  This flattered Nishani. To arouse people was a requisite for a movie star.

  ‘So what’s the problem?’

  Rakesh stood up and sat by a steel trunk-turned-stool.

  ‘I never wanted to tell you this. But now…’ He glanced at Nishani once who was awaiting his next words.

  ‘My father never married my mother.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘After impregnating my mother, he promised to marry her, but eloped with a co-worker of his. My mother had to go through a lot of shit to sustain both of us. You know how society treats a young woman who has a child out of wedlock.’ Rakesh looked dead serious. He wasn’t crying. But Nishani was sure he was within. She also knew his personal wrath hollowing his core would melt because of his uninterrupted stream of words. When he was quiet, she went close to him and held his face. For a moment Nishani’s heart sank. As if in that moment two pains coalesced to form one giant pain of which, now she knew, Rakesh too was a part. They craved to do away with the pain, to disown, become amnesiac towards it. But then if they could do so, life would have been stripped of its hallmark. Both Rakesh and Nishani, in that moment, were trying to crawl towards the happiness that succeeds sadness with the baby steps of their tears.

  Nishani missed her father and all that which never happened between the two of them but could have. Suddenly the wishes seemed so distant that they were miles away from the harpoon of a memory.

  ‘I am sorry, Rakesh.’ She was relieved to know the emotions had not choked her enough. Rakesh looked up at her. His eyes glistened with tears.

  ‘I am sorry too.’

  ‘Why are you sorry, stupid?’

  ‘To make you say sorry, I’m sorry.’

  Nishani kissed him on his forehead. The moment had taught her what togetherness was all about; to leave aside the exotic dishes of the world and get lost in each other’s emotional cuisine.

  ‘You knew we were never made for the other and that’s why you wanted to get me as quickly as possible, isn’t it? Marriage was a means to your inner insecurity.’

  Rakesh nodded a yes.

  ‘But I can’t—’ she’d only started.

  ‘You don’t have to say it,’ he completed. Nishani delicately freed herself of his wrap and looking at him said, ‘Goodbye Rakesh. Have a great life.’

  Rakesh was too scattered within to respond. Though Nishani knew she was done with both Rakesh and Rehan, she wouldn’t forget the two crazy facts about companionship they respectively taught her: one, everyone is not made for everyone no matter how common the voids are. And two: sex, in the end, can neither be a means to a companionship nor an end. At best, it’s a part-and-parcel thing.

  While riding her Enfield back home, she once again saw an autorickshaw following her. This time, stopping by a traffic signal and looking at the man, she gestured with her hands and mouth.

  I want to talk, she meant.

  After she made it clear she wanted to talk, her stalker sent her an sms with the exact place, day, and time to confirm the meeting. Nishani wasn’t surprised he had her mobile phone number. These days, everyone is only a decision away from everyone. The fact that he had taken the trouble of getting her mobile number made her feel important. And within the core of importance, Nishani realized of late, lay cocooned one of her favourite aphrodisiacs.

  Morning was an unusual time to meet a stranger. There was nothing inspiring about the place even. Looking at her watch, Nishani tried hard not to read into the stalker’s intention of deciding to meet her here. Reading someone’s intention without meeting a person was like trusting a subtitle of a foreign film—you will understand the subtitles but you can never be sure of its accuracy. The next minute she saw her stalker step into the bakery.

  ‘Do you know what’s there in a name?’ the man said immediately after he told her his name—Vishwas Naik—and sat opposite her. ‘Gossip,’ he smiled. ‘No name, no gossip. No gossip, no name.’

  It made Nishani smile. Seconds later, a boy came over and kept two cups of steaming tea and two apple pies in front of them. The apple pie, Vishwas said, was Yazdani’s specialty; the place in South Mumbai where they were sitting.

  ‘So, what do you want to talk about?’ he asked.

  Nishani noticed his one large sip emptied half the cup. Was he in a hurry?

  ‘I don’t know. I just wanted to. Tell me, why do you follow me around?’

  ‘I knew you would want to know that. You have the right to.’

  ‘Do I?’ Slicing the pie with a fork she realized it was softer than she presumed.

  ‘Yes, since we are in a relationship.’

  ‘A what?’ The piece of pie stopped inches before her open mouth.

  ‘Relationship. Didn’t you know?’ Another large sip and he was done with his tea.

  ‘Excuse me!’ The pie stopped short before her mouth.


  ‘We are in a relationship whenever we repeat anything willingly or otherwise.’

  Looking at her please-clarify stare, he looked at his watch and then continued, ‘Like, he glanced outside, ‘You see the man running away there.’ Nishani followed his gaze. Precisely then, a man indeed ran across the road. Is this guy an illusionist? She wondered.

  ‘Whenever I come here, and I do so often, I see him do that. It was only day before yesterday that I followed him. He runs every day at this time to catch a particular bus. It means he is in a relationship with the bus. If you come here tomorrow to have the tea and the apple pie again, then you will be in a relationship with it and the bakery as well. Doesn’t matter whether you approve of it or not.’

  There was silence during which Vishwas finished his pie. He ordered another one and looked at Nishani, ‘You know why people have one-night stands?’ Considering Nishani’s vulnerable face he answered, ‘Since more than a night will turn it into a relationship.’

  ‘Hmm. So, why did you follow me all these days?’ Enough of beating around the bush, she decided.

  ‘Why do you think?’

  ‘To get into a relationship with me?’

  ‘That’s eventual.’

  ‘I thought you were obsessed with me and wanted to perhaps sleep with me.’

  Vishwas looked at her, held his sight and then burst out laughing. Some portions of his apple pie came spraying out and got stuck around his mouth. He took out a white handkerchief and wiped them off.

  ‘Sorry, I just imagined my wife’s face if she’d heard you right now.’

  ‘You have a wife?’

  ‘Parvati. And two kids. Sonal and Suraj. Six and three years old.’

  ‘That’s weird.’ Nishani quickly gestured to the boy for another pie—was she already in a relationship with the apple pie?—and said, ‘Don’t mind please, I thought you were some sexually frustrated middle-aged bachelor, but you sound like a content man.’

  ‘You got the middle age and content part right.’ His face contorted a smile.

  ‘Nice. If you are happy with your wife and still following a young girl around, what does that make you? A saint?’

  Nishani’s crisp sense of humour was appealing. ‘A saint is one who can sin without feeling guilty about it. So no, I’m no saint.’