It’s the same man whose face I saw in the car on our way to the station from the hospital!
She closed her eyes, not believing what she was seeing. On opening them again, she took a good look at him: he had a pleasant, smiling face, and his eyes stared right back at her. He had a fair complexion; his straight hair was cut rather short. In the photograph he wore a red shirt and leaned against a wall, with his arms folded casually across his chest.
There was nothing exceptional about the face except that she had seen it in a memory flash. Sagarika felt his profile photo was clicked as though he was just sitting across the table and looking at her.
She was so stunned by his photo that she didn’t notice the arrival of a new message from him.
Sagarika!
Cheeni…is that u??
Her fingers were poised on the keyboard. She wasn’t sure what she should do. She decided to reply.
This is Sagarika. U?
What do you mean…U? This is Akash.
Forget everything else…where have you been …it’s been a year and half, nearly.
Have been worried sick
Didn’t know how to reach you
I have been waiting
I…are you there?? Y r u silent. Say something, Cheeni.
Sagarika was now glued to the conversation.
Y do u call me Cheeni
–
What do u mean Y? I always call u Cheeni. U r my Cheeni.
Sweety! What’s going on? Where r u? Y is your mobile disconnected. CHEENI!! Talk to me.
With a great deal of trepidation at the prospect of communicating with a man of whom she had no recollection, Sagarika started mulling over how she would take the conversation forward. Although his name didn’t bring to mind any recollections, the fact that he was deeply grieved about her absence and that he called her by the name that stirred strong emotions in her made her decide to tell him about the bomb blasts.
I met with an accident.
I was travelling in the train in which one of the bombs was placed.
Then she told him about the coma, the numerous surgeries, the prolonged stay in the hospital and finally about her memory loss.
I don’t remember anything. I don’t remember anyone. I don’t even remember my name. Rishab told me. U know Rishab?
A long pause ensued. Sagarika anxiously looked at her screen and waited for a reply.
No. I don’t. I only know you.
So you have forgotten everything. Where r u now? In Mumbai?
There was a note of distress in the man’s messages – it managed to break through the placidity of Facebook chat. Sagarika could feel it.
Now I am in Gurgaon. For the past year I was in a hospital in Mumbai.
–
All this time you were in Mumbai … and I … Cheeni … u don’t know … I can’t tell u … how worried I was. Give me your number. I want to speak with u.
–
No. I’ll not give you my number. I don’t know u.
A part of her wanted to trust him but something held her back.
Cheeni. Baby, this is me. Your Chikoo. U don’t trust me.
–
CAN U PLEASE STOP USING THESE SILLY NAMES. I DON’T REMEMBER U OR ANYONE. My head is beginning to hurt.
–
Please chee … Sagarika. Plz calm down. Ok. Why don’t u call me? Is that ok?
–
Y do u want to talk?
–
I want to hear your voice. Plz. I have been waiting for so long. Sagarika. PLZ!
–
Ok. U give me your number and I’ll call u.
Akash typed his number and Sagarika dialled the digits from her cellphone.
‘Hello?’ she said, feeling very odd calling up a man she had no memory of.
‘Sagarika.’
The voice at the other end was deep and throaty. For a few seconds, neither of them said anything. Sagarika was waiting for Akash to say something. Overwhelmed with emotion, Akash was trying to clear the lump in his throat.
‘Say something,’ Sagarika said. ‘You wanted to speak with me.’
‘Actually … I just wanted to hear your voice, Cheeni. It’s been so long. So, so long. All this time you were in Mumbai. In the same city as I. I must have passed by Hope Memorial Hospital so many times. If only I had known that you were there! All this time … I didn’t know what had happened to you. Your cellphone was out of service. And now, I realize that you were there! You didn’t leave, Cheeni. You didn’t leave me.’
Sagarika listened to him silently. She wasn’t sure but it sounded like he was weeping.
‘Who are you? Akash … I … don’t even … how do we know each other?’
There was a long silence. Sagarika thought maybe he had hung up.
‘That’s a question I can’t answer on the phone, or through Facebook messages, Cheeni.’
‘Can you please stop calling me that? It feels so silly,’ she snapped.
‘No. I can’t! You loved the name. And it is time you remembered the things you love, Cheeni. It is time…’
The voice which had been quivering a few minutes ago was now firm. There was a quiet resolve in it. And Sagarika felt a strange comfort in it.
‘We’ll talk again, later,’ she said and hung up.
She shut down her laptop, kept it aside and put her head on the table. The cold wooden surface felt good on her warm forehead. Too much had happened in just one morning and her head was spinning.
The way he spoke, he sounded so forlorn, so hurt not to have heard from me for so long. I must have known him well. Who is Akash Batra? And how does he know me?
21
Akash sat processing all that Sagarika had just told him. It seemed unbelievable – how could one forget everything?
Most important, he was still coming to terms with the fact that she was one of the victims of the bomb blasts. Since he was in Delhi when it happened, he had only read about the blasts in the newspapers. Not once did it occur to him that Sagarika could have been in one of the trains. Of all the plausible scenarios he had imagined for her silence over the past one and a half year, he had never ever considered that she could be a victim of the blasts. The coma and the memory loss were even more unbelievable.
And why did she board a local train? She had a car. Why didn’t she drive?
There were just too many questions. Only she could have offered some answers – but she had no memory.
Still, Akash was relieved to realize that he had not been abandoned; Sagarika hadn’t gone away on purpose. He had misinterpreted her last Facebook post. At the time he felt she had decided to move on and in his view that was the right thing to do. But on knowing the real reason for her silence and everything that followed, Akash began to curse himself over the evil twist of fate. Pacing back and forth in his modest one-bedroom apartment, Akash’s mind darted in different directions. He felt angry at the injustice of it all.
All these months she was in Mumbai and I didn’t even know. I have been so miserable, helpless and lost. I could have helped her. If only I knew … All this while I’d been cursing her, angry with her for deserting me. But she was in a coma, nearly dead!
A week after the bomb blasts, when he didn’t hear from her, he had inferred that she had decided to move on. Initially, he had accepted her decision.
She has the right to do it. She’s a married woman. She has every reason to move away. After all, I was the one who hesitated. I didn’t give her the assurance…
Then came anger.
How could she just disappear? Not even a goodbye. Am I so meaningless to her? Am I so insignificant that she can just walk away?
Then the truth of his own feelings began to dawn on him.
He realized that he was insanely and hopelessly in love. He cursed himself for not knowing the truth about his feelings. He hoped, prayed and wished a thousand times to go back to that moment – to that morning when she had asked him if he was ready to be in committed rela
tionship with her.
But he had faltered. He wasn’t sure if he had the courage to take such a big step.
Given the nature of their relationship, he had not been introduced to any of her friends. He didn’t know anyone whom he could ask about her whereabouts. He checked his email, Facebook and SMS inbox for days and nights. He prayed for some message from her. He wanted to know that he was missed, that he wasn’t a nobody in her life.
But having finally heard from Sagarika after so many months, he calmed down a bit. Until despair struck again.
She doesn’t remember me. Us. Nothing. How do I remind her of who I am to her?
22
Thirty-eight-year-old Akash Batra was like the wind. He blew where he willed, stirred a little storm and then carried on when it pleased him. Not traffic-stopping handsome, but pleasant faced, with straight silky hair cut short and black eyes that had a naughty shine in them.
Akash’s apartment in Mumbai’s western suburbs was the quintessential bachelor’s pad. Located on the second floor, it had two rooms, a kitchen and a small balcony. Both rooms had huge windows, although they didn’t offer any great views to look out to – just a busy noisy street with rows of roadside restaurants doing brisk business. But for a city starved of affordable housing and kind landlords, he could take solace in the fact that the apartment was his.
Preeti Bua, his father’s only sister, had left the house in his possession. A widow who had lost her husband years ago, Preeti Bua was childless and pampered the boy silly every year when she visited Akash’s family in Karnal for Diwali. An English teacher by profession, she listened to his school essays, praised him endlessly and also gave him valuable feedback to improve.
‘Preeti, don’t encourage the boy,’ Akash’s father would say. ‘Has anyone made a name for himself by writing essays, huh?’ He rued the fact that his son showed no interest in numbers or business and only dreamt of books and writing.
‘You wait and watch, bhaiyya. His writing will make him a millionaire one day,’ she would tell her brother.
As he grew older, Akash was relieved to note that Preeti Bua was his most spirited cheerleader. After graduation, when Akash moved to Mumbai from Karnal to work for a TV channel, Preeti Bua’s house was his weekly stop. Of course, he visited her to get his pile of dirty clothes washed and have some ghar ka khaana. But he also reciprocated her affection in equal measure. He often narrated stories of the serials he worked on. He even read out some of the stories he wrote and got her special passes for Filmfare and Miss India events. For the childless widow, Akash became no less than a son.
Naturally, when she passed away, she let him inherit the apartment. Given his work and salary, it would have taken Akash years to buy even a pigeon hole in the metropolis.
For Akash though, the apartment was also his ticket to freedom. It set him free from a job that he no longer enjoyed.
‘I will now do the one thing that I’ve always wanted to do,’ he told himself, typing out his resignation letter. ‘I will write.’
His resignation from a full-time job elicited different reactions from people. Some were sceptical of the prospects a full-time writing career held. Many believed it was not sustainable in the long run.
But Akash had made up his mind. Sure, he did not have a huge bank balance, but the comfort of rent-free existence reduced the financial burden on him considerably. His secret dream was to pen a bestseller which would be made into a film and once the film released and became a blockbuster, it would make him rich and famous. More than the lure of money, the dream he saw often was that he was a bestselling author, his books displayed on the windows of bookstores. Of late, it was this vision that had been keeping him awake at nights, not allowing him to sleep.
So he chased his dream with passionate fervour. A free bird untethered to anyone or anything; his mind, body and spirit roamed freely. Thinking, feeling, experiencing and writing. Both girls and money didn’t flow like a river in spate but it wasn’t a trickle either. A young attractive male with a cute smile and a decent sense of humour; it wasn’t tough to attract the female eye.
He always thought love could wait. The absence of a steady, caring woman in his life didn’t bother him. But life had other plans for him.
23
‘Holy shit! My head hurts!’
That was his first thought when the loud honking of cars woke up Akash. His second thought was that the room he was in seemed different. Larger.
This didn’t look like his apartment. Where was he? A quick look around and it all came back. An impromptu gathering of college friends in Bandra the previous evening had led to prolonged drinking till three in the morning. After four stiff drinks, Akash forgot all about his early morning meeting in town.
By the time the party wound up, he was in no shape to go home and he slept off at his friend’s apartment.
When he woke up, he not only realized that he was late for the meeting by an hour, but also that the shirt he was wearing was badly crushed and needed to be made presentable. So he hollered at his friend’s servant to get him the steam iron and got to work.
Minutes later, he sprinkled some cologne, put on the shirt and stepped out. ‘All I need now is to get a cab,’ he told himself as he ran out of the complex.
To add to his woes, the weather gods decided to get nasty. It started drizzling and, as if on cue, all cabs and autos disappeared from the roads. ‘Thank you, Mr Murphy,’ he muttered to himself. Akash loved Mumbai, but he just couldn’t stand the city when it rained. What annoyed him even more were unseasonal rains, like this one. November was no time for showers in Mumbai. As he jogged his way across the non-existent footpaths, spray from the rain-showers got him completely drenched. He was clearly in no condition to go to a work-related meeting. And there wasn’t any cab or rickshaw in sight. He dashed into one of restaurants at the junction of Pali Hill Road and Turner Road. Fuming and cursing the whole city, the rains and everything else he could think of, he pondered over what he should do next.
‘Do you mind moving aside? You’re blocking my view.’
Akash spun around and stared indignantly at the source of the comment.
Wild curly tresses, tied into a hurried angry bun that displayed more impatience than craft. Rectangular, dark brown–framed glasses perched on her nose, and forehead creased with a frown. A bowl of soup pushed to one side of the table. A sketchpad lay open in front of her.
She was sketching.
‘Oh! Of course,’ Akash said. ‘I wouldn’t dream of getting in the way of the French Riviera–like view.’ He bowed slightly and stepped aside.
It was time to reschedule his meeting. He was in no condition to reach there. There was no way he could land up in his drenched bedraggled state. He had two choices in front of him – walk around in the rain and bully some autowallah to take him home, or sit down next to this pretty woman who was sketching and start a conversation. The latter, he realized, was clearly a better option. And in any case, what waited for him at home? Dirty laundry and an even dirtier room.
‘So, you are an artist?’ he said, as he sat down pulling an empty chair. The woman looked up at him and he flashed his best smile.
‘By the way, Akash.’
‘No, I’m not an artist. I’m actually baking a cake.’
She flashed an equally cute smile. ‘Sagarika.’
They both laughed.
‘Great! Give me a slice when you’re done. But seriously, what’s so scenic about this dirty, muddy road? This is just Pali Hill Road, not Sunset Boulevard.’
When she paused to sip on some soup, he extended his arm casually to take the sketchpad from her.
He wasn’t prepared for what he saw. She was sketching a crumbling heritage bungalow across the street. Yet another piece of ancient architecture was being demolished to make way for a multi-storeyed building with glass and steel facades.
‘There’s something so sad about a house being demolished,’ she said. ‘So many generations must have st
ayed in it, celebrated birthdays, weddings, parties and other fun things. These bungalows have so much character. Certainly much more than any high-rise.’
Akash could see that she felt very passionate about the subject. He too shared her sentiments. A few months earlier, he had just done a photo-feature on the grand old bungalows of Mumbai which were being torn down.
‘You are good at this,’ he said, unable to take his eyes away from the sketch. ‘You’ve captured the soul of the house.’
Then followed an uncomfortable pause, the kind that makes its way into a conversation between two strangers, when neither knows what to say next.
‘So what do you do, Akash?’ Sagarika asked.
‘I write. Sometimes for money, to bring food on the table. But yeah, I mostly write for myself.’
‘How lovely!’ she said. ‘I paint and sketch. Sometimes I sell my works at a few art shops. But I too mostly paint for myself. When I’m not travelling the world with my husband, that is.’
She smiled. Akash noticed that the comment about travelling with her husband was a clever way of letting him know that she was married. Was she drawing the line? He ignored the thought.
‘Yeah, I love the freedom of my life too,’ he said. ‘No boss. No boring office cubicle. I am my own master.’
As the rain-showers continued unabated, Akash and Sagarika opened up to each other about their lives. She played with a lone tress that escaped from the bun while he sat with one arm draped on the chair, trying to look casual.
The conversation was enjoyable to say the least. Sagarika couldn’t remember the last time she had talked to a stranger and felt good about herself. Akash was a good listener and he was curious about her life. This wasn’t an everyday occurrence. She had to admit, she felt a connection. But she didn’t need reminding that she was treading on thin ice. Akash too had to withhold himself from being too inquisitive or flirty – the rock on her finger a gentle reprimand.
Their first meeting that day seemed like a casual encounter, orchestrated by chance. They were two strangers who just happened to meet, chat for a while and then move on. They didn’t think much about it either.
A Forgotten Affair Page 8