Day before yesterday, a couple came to our hotel. The girl had hair just like yours and for a moment I thought it was you. I excused myself out. Of course it wasn’t you. Or was it? I don’t know. I don’t know what made me hide like a convict. I smoked an entire box of cigarettes just thinking about it. Yes, I have started to smoke. And drink too. I think I never wanted you to discover me like this, even though this is my resilient side. Weird! It was because this particular side existed in me that I didn’t succumb to depression and other shit. I call it the jacket-over-Jack syndrome of mine. I always react to the ‘jacket’, than care about the Jack wearing it. Ideally, I should be proud of the Jack in me who is helping his family at the age of seventeen, but I am instead ashamed of the jacket that presented me as a small-time receptionist in an unimportant hotel.
Guess where I am right now? As the world celebrates New Year’s Eve, I’m inside a police station. Shubash Sir’s wife, Vinita, said I tried to rape her. And I was dutifully handed over to the police.
Three months back, I met her for the first time when Shubash sir sent me to his home to fetch a few of his belongings. After that, I’d been summoned there a number of times by her for some errand or the other. It was her chance to talk to me about her life, her sexual life, her emotional life, and every other shit life she led. She always used to be extra appreciative of me. Then yesterday, she said she loves me and asked me to elope with her because Shubash Sir used to beat her. She never showed me any scars. Vinita is twenty five. Shubash sir is forty. I told her I don’t love her. She slapped me. I told her I have other responsibilities. She slapped me. I added I have someone in my heart. She slapped me. Then I punched her once. She started bleeding from her nose. She called Shubash Sir and cooked a lie. Nobody believed me. Before calling him, she said if I was sorry and agreed to be her slave forever, only then she would take her statement back.
An hour ago, when dad was here, I finally said I was sorry. He realized I had actually done the dastardly act. He asked me not to see him again. He thinks I have insulted his entire pedigree. He didn’t give me a chance to explain what the real issue was. Mom came, cried, and went away. I’m sure I’ll be released by tomorrow after which I will not keep my promise of being Vinita’s slave. I would have to search for another job and a new place to live.
People around me have been charged for different crimes, but inside all are accountable for the same sin: Life!
Happy New Year, Nish.
September 27
Dear Nish,
Are relationships like toothpaste? Everyday we unknowingly empty them one squeeze at a time and then one day we realize there’s no more left. There’s the tube, of course, but no more paste. What do you do then?
I changed my job but Vinita didn’t leave me. I don’t know how she tracked me down. I never asked her. I’m working as a flight steward with a domestic airline. I faked my school passing certificate with the help of a middleman. Thank god ours is a democracy.
Vinita sponsored my three month air-steward training course. At first, it hurt my ego, but then I thought I also have a life to take care of. I’m earning eleven thousand a month. I give four to my mother so that she doesn’t have to work. She tells my dad that she is working and that it’s her income. I haven’t met dad since my release. Mom meets me secretly. She knows where I stay. Whenever she is here, she arranges everything in my small rented place. Vinita comes here during her safe period. We fuck like mad. If I don’t fuck her, she bores me with her emotional life, spiritual life, sexual life, and the other lives she lives in this one life. Once I gave her some hints about you. She responded by saying there are two worlds: one within your heart and one outside. And the dissatisfaction we garner from the outside world determines from whom we crave satisfaction within the heart world. And when the real world’s and the heart world’s intentions synchronize, we call it ‘happiness’. I never thought Vinita could think also.
Priyanka is my colleague; an air hostess. She likes me a lot. How do I know? When we have some feelings for someone, our entire look and body language becomes a meaning of our feeling. But she scares me too because being close to her, I feel, disturbs the equilibrium I have with you in me. I think whenever we come in contact with someone, that person starts to translate us. With every translation, we drift away from our original self and become a translated version; for better or for worse.
I fear if Priyanka and I come close, I may invariably be translated further and I don’t want that. I am so content with this arrangement: me not having to meet you ever, not having to sleep with you ever, and not having to risk a separation with you ever. It’s not that we always get to fly together, but whenever we do, I like her company. We discuss a lot about cinema, authors, books, poetry because she writes as well. I have read some of her work. It’s good. It’s because I love her company that I avoid her intentionally. It’s a tug of war between attraction and attachment. Sometimes, while lying beside Vinita who loves to caress my naked chest, I wonder whom I am kidding? Let me tell you a secret and that will give you a glimpse of my condition: I have fucked Vinita a lot of times but never have I allowed her to kiss my lips. Weirdly unbelievable, isn’t it? That’s exactly what you have translated me into, Nish.
I still dream of being an actor. I practice late night in front of the mirror. Vinita said she had a cousin in the film industry and shall recommend me if I marry her. I haven’t responded to this proposal of hers. Right now, I only want to save some money for my mom. I can’t afford to leave this job. Circumstances circumcise the dick of our desires. I think I’m drunk. I better end here.
Happy Diwali, Nish.
July 8
Dear Nish,
Love is only the realized part of a connection.
And I have realized the other portions so organically, unwillingly too, that it has become ineffable for me. The unrealized part are there in me, but my conscious lets that part sleep. When I said love is the realized part, I meant it’s only the tip, the good part of a heart to heart connection. And a normal person is happy to realize only the tip. The rest is for people who think a lot, who feel, and whose awareness of self defeats their ignorance hands down.
I have realized there’s a spiritual libido in me. Then there is an emotional libido as well. And finally, the libido for the flesh is also there. Vinita satisfies my physical libido. Priyanka satisfies my emotional libido. And you, Nish, you take care of my spiritual libido. I thought about it a lot in the last few months. Vinita for me is only an object. We fuck. We talk. We fuck. She wouldn’t have been with me if either of us didn’t have hormones. I’m with her because of the same reason she is with me. She claims it, I don’t. She is responsible for unlocking a sexual maniac in me. Through her I have realized that in order to satisfy the physical libido, it doesn’t matter who you are with.
With Priyanka it’s different. I like to be with her even without a hard on. I guess when a man feels so for a woman, he should secure her through marriage. But as much as she satisfies my emotional libido, I feel the hunger of my spiritual libido. It’s like you go for a roller-coaster ride, you enjoy whatever number of loops it has, but there still exists when you come out you feel a void in you which says another loop would have been just perfect. It’s elusive satisfaction that I’m talking about. And I feel it every time Priyanka and I finish our discourse. It makes me crave for another ‘loop’. She, with her presence, has connected me to the emotional cribber in me. Now I know why nobody can live a solitary life.
To experience that extra ‘loop’, I am pushed to you; the one who satiates my spiritual libido. Like there is only one God, there can only be one spiritual satisfier. Here the objectivity I feel toward Vinita doesn’t exist. The subjectivity I suffer from with Priyanka doesn’t mean anything. That’s why, Nish, I won’t be able to get over you. The reason is simple: I don’t have to. Lucky are those who get to satisfy oneself of all three libidos through one person.
Anyway, Priyanka finally proposed to me.
She didn’t say so directly, but I understood it was a proposal. Her parents want her to be engaged to an IIT-IIM boy who is here on vacation from the US. They don’t know each other. They are supposed to stay together for the rest of their lives. Hail man’s lust for domesticity! Anyway, since the proposal I have been thinking about what I should tell her. If I’d never met you, I would have certainly said yes to her. Nish, you are not merely a realization. You are an awareness for me. And I can’t explain you to her. I only told her there ‘was’ someone. Sometimes the present comes out in past tense. She didn’t probe much.
This February, Vinita introduced me to the distant cousin she’d told me about before; Ricky. He is a line producer. He said he would see what he can do. But later Vinita discovered about Priyanka. She has always been possessive about me. I have seen her sniffing my clothes in case I am cheating on her. As if my saying yes to Priyanka would qualify as a betrayal for Vinita and my relationship. Anyway, this was how things were two months back: Priyanka thought I would definitely say yes to her, I wanted an excuse to say no to her because I have you. Vinita said in case I needed any connection in the film industry, then I had to forget Priyanka. And these are how things are right now: Priyanka is engaged, I was part of a film unit for a month, shooting some cheap commercial flick with a big star, while Vinita and I are no longer together. When I told her about my not accepting Priyanka’s proposal, she was so ecstatic that she convinced Ricky to make me a part of a film shoot as a prop boy.
One day, during lunch break I heard Ricky abusing the caterer for not bringing proper non-veg food. I couldn’t control myself and beat him up like mad. The caterer was my dad. I was, of course, thrown out of the shoot. I met my mom after the incident who said I did the right thing. I said I did what I did. Adjectives are such a waste of time. Right now, I don’t have a job since I’d applied for leave because of the shoot, the airlines officials hadn’t accepted and so I’d resigned. I don’t have Vinita. The Ricky bash up didn’t escape Shubash Sir’s ears. And when he came to know Vinita had requested him to take me, he was extra rude to her. I heard she is pregnant. Except for some savings, I have nothing. Tomorrow is a stranger. Yesterday is a stalker. Today is the savior. But when the savior is confused, the stranger begins to stalk and the stalker becomes even scarier.
I miss Priyanka even though I said no to her. Don’t you think at times we behave as spineless versions of our desires? Why else am I more committed to the person who happened in my heart but not in reality than to the one who could have happened to me in real?
Happy ‘First Kiss’, Nish. I suddenly remembered it’s this day, a different year, that we’d kissed.
August 13
Dear Nish,
If I can defeat myself every day, then I don’t need to give a fuck about any other race!
Every time I sit down to write to you, there’s some change in me, my life, and my surroundings. Or maybe it’s the other way round. Now I stay with my parents and I work with dad in his catering business. Mom somehow managed to explain to him it wasn’t my fault that I landed up in the lock up—just like it wasn’t his fault he lost his money. I don’t know if dad has really forgiven me. Mom said he blames himself for what happened to me in the last few years. The truth is, I have never blamed him for anything. You can’t come between someone and his suffering. It’s the strongest of all relationships.
The catering business is going alright. We have shifted from the chawl to a proper one-bedroom flat in Mira Road. We cater to birthday parties, weddings, and film productions as well. I go to talk to clients: what all they would like to order, number of people they are looking at, kind of food they want, and the like. Dad supervises the entire process whereas mom looks after the cooking part. We have four cooks. She doesn’t want to compromise on the taste. That, she says, is the soul of the food and food is the heart of our business. Taste is the soul of our food; I like that. If there’s no taste, the food is useless; doesn’t matter how nice it looks. Nish, have I lost my taste doing what I did in these years?
With no Priyanka or Vinita, I feel very lonely at times. I try to immerse myself in work, read a lot, watch films, try to improvise scenes in front of the mirror, criticize myself, depress myself, hate myself, but when someone praises our catering, life seems good gain. There are times when I think I’ll be the next Shahraan Ali Bakshi and then sometimes I think I will be lost into oblivion forever. I think I’m sick. Anyway, I still remember how nuts you were about Shahraan. I hope it’s not like that anymore. They say adolescent crushes wear off easily. I say a lot of adolescent things wear off easily except their memory of it.
I met a guy during one of my catering stints with a film production. He is a FTII pass out. He is into direction. He was supposed to make a documentary for his college when I met him. I suggested him the subject: our catering business. He stayed with me for a week, followed our business, and was fascinated by the number of lives it touched. Avinash and I are good friends now. After he shot the documentary, he took me to the editing room. We sat together for the background score session as well. It’s such a mind-blowing world, Nish! I told him I wanted to be an actor and showed him some of my improvisations. He was impressed. He told me he is writing some kind of a new-age film: shoestring budget, dark story, unknown actors, and gritty storytelling with his FTII friends. He said he would ask me to audition once they finalize the script. The working title is ‘Mumbai Dogs’. I’m waiting for him to get back to me on this. It’s always good to wait for something in life. I think that increases our gravity towards it. But don’t we always end up waiting for something in life? If this guy had not come in contact with me, then I would have waited for a chance to come to me. Now that I have, I’ll wait for him to get back. As a kid, I used to wait intensely for so many things. As I grew, my ‘waiting for’ list suffered because life convinced me some things are not worth waiting for.
By the way congratulations, Nish! I saw you in the advertisement. You looked like a natural. Well, you have it in your genes. I’m happy we’ll be in the same industry, but I don’t want to come across you. Guess why?
It’ll take care of the biggest wait of my life.
4:30 a.m., 2008
Kaash showed signs of life on the bed. It made Aravali quickly fold the letter in her hand. There was only one more to be read.
From the time she opened the box to the moment she closed it, she knew a journey had taken place. And she’d learned a lot: about life, about relationships, about how both can merge to form a lethal combination and most importantly, about Kaash. He was a living paradox: a compulsive playboy in his mind and an obsessive true lover in his heart. How I wished all my life for someone to love me like this, Aravali wondered, like an uncouth wild animal loves a manipulative forest with unadulterated admiration. She believed Nishani was lucky in an unlucky way. Lucky because she’d triggered things in a person that girls can only dream about and unlucky for she never knew about them. Or so she sensed reading the letters.
Aravali cautiously kept the letters back in the first-aid box. The way Kaash was turning in his bed, he would wake up anytime. She stood up and placed the box inside the wardrobe like it was before.
She picked her watch lying lazily on a small chair by the bed. The time triggered urgency in her. She had to catch a flight to Kolkata to attend a short-film festival inauguration at Nandan around noon.
Kaash opened his eyes abruptly. He sat up only to realize Aravali was hurriedly dressing.
‘I’ve got to run!’ she said and hoped she wasn’t looking as nervous as she was feeling.
Kaash only smiled. Once dressed, Aravali picked her bag from the floor and looked at him.
‘Can we meet again?’
Kaash nodded.
‘Thanks!’
Till she slept with him, she’d only imagined what he’d be like as a person. But after reading the letters, she’d actually seen his emotional genitals.
‘See you later, fornicator.’ As she winked at him,
she was sure nothing on earth could take him away from her now.
SCENE 34
Location: Mumbai Studios
There was an omnipresent hostile energy in the set and a conscious restraint in everyone’s demeanour as if a poltergeist was scheduled to strike anytime. After the media claimed the two actors had some raunchy sex on set and followed the news like hunter dogs, the producers realized of all the surgeries in the world, sealing people’s mouth, figuratively, is the costliest.
Inside her sophisticated customized vanity van in the parking lot, Reva’s eyes were fixed on one of the city’s leading tabloids.
Everyone makes mistakes. The quote was highlighted within a box and written in bold black. It was assigned her name. But she never said it. The entire article was knitted with lies. That was the journalist’s ploy: either report what was said or report what’s not and squeeze out a reaction. It was true for most of the newspapers and channels reporting the nude-scene fiasco.
The bad thing was she knew Shahraan must have read the stupid media stories circulating like poverty does in an underdeveloped country, but the worse was his silence on the issue. It was more depressing than the entire media hullaballoo. She would have loved it if he had asked for an explanation. That would have given her a chance to sort things out. Frustrated, Reva took out a tiny bottle of sleeping pills from her Gucci and popped one in her mouth. She woke up only when the shot was ready.
The scene: Shahraan’s and Reva’s characters would be sitting under an umbrella across a table for two in a resort. Kaash, playing a waiter, would come with drinks, and while serving, would accidentally spill some on Reva’s dress. Her character would be shocked to see her former lover while Shahraan’s character, her present husband, would slap the waiter in response. And it would be a cut.
How About a Sin Tonight? Page 19