Swear You Won't Tell?

by Vedashree Khambete-Sharma

  ‘Sure,’ he said, waving his credit card at the barman, ‘I’ll get this.’

  She smiled a syrupy little smile, ‘Awww!’

  ‘You’ll be okay going home on your own?’ he asked, ignoring it.

  ‘Sure. Also, awwwwwwww.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Uday, looking thoroughly disgusted. He gave her a quick one-armed hug before making his way out of the crowd.

  She watched him leave and let out a breath. She didn’t plan on hanging around much longer. Her glass was almost empty. Perhaps her bloodstream could handle one last drink. She turned to the barman.

  ‘Can I just have a beer, please?’

  As he slid her the bottle, she held out her debit card. But he waved it away.

  ‘Oh, that’s been paid for,’ he told her.

  ‘What? By whom?’ she asked.

  The barman jerked his head in the direction of the man standing next to her.

  ‘So,’ said Dhruv Juneja with a grin, ‘you come here often?’

  Eight

  There are many horrifying ways to wake up. You could wake up in a bathtub filled with ice and suspiciously red water, holding a note that explains the regrettable absence of your kidneys. Or wake up to the cries of your colicky newborn … and never be able to go back to sleep till that baby turns eighteen and leaves for college. Or, if you’re the lead in a Madhur Bhandarkar film, there’s the horror of waking up next to the African American gentleman you met in the club last night. That can only mean bad things from a plot point of view.

  Avantika awoke to arguably more pleasant circumstances—muffled screaming and the distant slamming of a door. She opened her eyes and in the best traditions of fiction, shut them immediately and groaned. She had slept with her contact lenses in, which meant her eyes now felt drier than sandpaper left out in the sun in sub-Saharan Africa. Blinking furiously, she sat up and clutched her spinning head. Another happy side-effect of crossing thirty. Blearily, she conducted a preliminary investigation. Clothes, on; underwear, intact; shoes, neatly lined up by the side of the bed; bag, right next to the shoes; body, in dire need of water, but otherwise unharmed. So far, so boring. Thank God. But—

  Room, unfamiliar. She grabbed the bottle of water on the nightstand. Gulping greedily, she proceeded to the next level of journalistic enquiry. The five ‘w’s and one ‘h’ variety1. Where was she? When did she get here? Who got her here? Why? What was she going to do now? And perhaps most pertinent of all, how much trouble was she in?

  She rose to her feet, a little unsteadily—the world seemed to insist on dipping to the right—and made her way to the window, parting the curtains ever so slightly. A lawn dappled with sunlight. And immediately outside the window, a laburnum in full bloom. Something clicked in her head. And suddenly, all the happy ignorance drained from her mind. The bar. The alcohol. Dhruv.

  Fuck.

  No, that wasn’t doing the situation proper justice.

  FUCK.

  Ah yes, much better.

  The night was coming back in needless, relentless flashes now. Laughter. More alcohol. Trying to call an Ola. Calling Shibani by mistake. Giggling over it. Jesus, giggling. Dropping the mobile phone. Phone refusing to start. Standing up, quickly followed by falling down. And being caught by … FUCK … Dhruv. So bad, so bad, so bad!

  Okay, first things first. She reached into her bag and fished out her phone. When she hit the power button, it started as if nothing had happened, as if last night was just a dream. It might as well have whistled nonchalantly, the bastard. She shot it a look of pure hatred. It pinged happily and told her she had two new messages—one from her phone service provider, urging her to try 4G and the other from her bank, proclaiming her laughable account balance. Along with—Oh! God!—seven missed calls from Aai and Baba!

  They were in Bangalore, visiting friends at the moment. And while that meant that they didn’t know she hadn’t gone home last night, they would nevertheless be worried senseless by now. She hit Aai’s number on her speed dial and waited for the call to connect.

  ‘Hello, Aai?’

  ‘Avanti! Kai hey? How many times to call you? Are you so busy you can’t answer your own mother’s call?’

  She was angry. Thank God.

  ‘Sorry, Aai … what—’

  ‘What sorry? You know how worried Baba is? He was about to book tickets to come back today!’

  ‘What? No, no—’

  ‘You’re not a child anymore. Learn to be more responsible, no?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry, but Aai, I was caught up in something serious.’

  ‘Serious? You are alright, no?’ This was not a woman prone to hysterics. This was a woman who had taken with infinite calm, her only daughter’s decision to enter the world of investigative journalism. While her husband had flapped around, raging about the needless dangers of the profession as compared to say, chartered accountancy, she had simply told her to be careful and to get on with it. Later, she had taken with equal equanimity Avantika’s move to feature writing.

  But the Nirbhaya rape in Delhi and closer home, the Shakti Mills incident in Mumbai had rattled her more than she cared to admit. The latter, in particular had left her shaken—the survivor had been a young photo-journalist. No, these days were different from those safe, carefree days of ten years ago. This country was barely the same.

  ‘I’m fine Aai, don’t worry. It’s … remember Laxmi from my school?’

  Puzzled silence on the other end. ‘Who?’

  ‘Laxmi,’ Avantika repeated, ‘She was in my class. We used to go to tuitions together, remember?’

  ‘Oh … yes, yes.’ She could picture her mother’s face softening, along with her voice, ‘Laxmi … Swaminathan, wasn’t it? How is she?’

  Dead. Maybe murdered.

  ‘She … passed away suddenly … this week.’

  ‘What?’ the shock in her mother’s voice was clear, ‘Oh God! How?’

  Avantika gave her the basics, sparing her the details. Somewhere around college, she had decided that parents, like young children, needed to be sheltered from the harsh reality of this world.

  ‘Arey-re, that poor girl,’ her mother murmured, ‘Her mother … I … I can’t even imagine—’

  ‘So… basically,’ Avantika said, after a moment’s silence, ‘I was at her place and stuff, so … that’s why, you know, the phone—’

  She mentally replayed the sentence. It had all the working parts of a reasonable explanation, but nothing connecting them to add up to a lie. As such. Luckily, her mother hadn’t noticed.

  ‘Okay, okay… ,’ she murmured, ‘I’ll tell Baba. You just try to pick up next time, okay? Or at least, call back. He gets worried. You know how he is.’

  Avantika rolled her eyes. She knew exactly how much of a drama queen her father could be. Muttering her goodbyes, she hung up. One awkward conversation down, another coming up.

  She stared at the door to the bedroom queasily. Maybe she could make a run for it, without anyone noticing. While her head pounded like an amateur drummer. Right. Okay, plan B: winging it. That ought to work. Sure.

  Shaking her head in self-disgust, she opened the door slowly and peered outside. Nobody was around. She was about to step out, when a thought struck her. Once she stepped out of this room, she could run into either Aisha or Dhruv, if not both. It was of paramount importance that she not look like a train-wreck when that happened. She took a deep breath and retreated into the room. One glance at the dressing table mirror confirmed her suspicions: someone had snatched her body while she had been asleep. The perpetrator was staring back at her in the mirror - a creature with bloodshot eyes, under-eye bags large enough to take to a weekend in Khandala and hair that could easily be repurposed into fat-free candy floss.

  Muttering ‘told-you-so’s at herself she headed into the bathroom. Someone thoughtful had made sure that there were some basic toiletries in there. She made herself look at least presentable, if not ravishing. Then, after a final glug from the water
bottle, she opened the door and let herself out.

  It took a second for her to find her bearings, but eventually, she found her way to a large, well-appointed dining room, where she found Dhruv halfway through some scrambled eggs, reading The Times of India.

  He looked up as she entered and gave her a warm smile.

  She cringed.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said, getting up and pulling out a chair for her.

  ‘If you insist,’ she said and he grinned.

  ‘Hungover? Or just hungry?’ he asked.

  Avantika realized it was both and told him so. He nodded in the direction of the table.

  ‘I don’t know what you eat when you have a hangover, but I read somewhere that eggs and toast is the best. With orange juice, preferably. Something about carbs and energy or whatever. Want some?’

  She nodded gratefully.

  ‘You’re okay with scrambled eggs, right?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I’d have asked how you like your eggs before telling the kitchen, but somehow I thought you’d say “unfertilised”.’ He was clearly trying not to smile and failing.

  ‘Ha ha,’ she said rolling her eyes. ‘I bet you have to fight girls off with a stick.’

  Dhruv smiled just as a smartly-dressed bearer entered with a tray piled with scrambled eggs, toast, butter, orange juice and a pot of coffee. Avantika’s stomach gave an excited squeal as the man laid it all in front of her, and she served herself, piling her plate with as much grace as she could muster—which, given how ravenous she suddenly felt, wasn’t very much.

  Dhruv watched her with amusement for a couple of minutes. After the third butter-drenched toast, she slowed down and wiped her lips delicately with her napkin.

  ‘So I’m just going to ask, okay?’ she said, not looking at him. ‘Just to clear things. We didn’t … nothing actually … I mean, I didn’t—’ She looked helplessly at him. ‘Well?’ she demanded.

  ‘Nothing happened,’ he said solemnly. ‘You stamped my toe really hard while trying to stand up. Oh, and Aisha went nuts today when I told her that I’d I brought you home. She really doesn’t like you, does she? But other than that, nothing.’

  She stared at him, then quickly glanced at the door, as if expecting a livid Aisha to walk in any second. Dhruv noticed.

  ‘She left,’ he said, having a bite of his toast.

  ‘Um… sorry about that,’ Avantika mumbled.

  ‘Don’t be,’ he said with a casual wave of his hand. ‘If I knew how much it would piss her off, I’d have brought you home sooner.’

  She opened her mouth to say something, then shut it. And opened it again. And realized that there was nothing she could think of saying to that. She shook her head and took a bite of her scrambled eggs. Then, she realized that she did actually have something to say.

  ‘Okay, this is going to sound ungrateful, but … why are you being nice to me again?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘You know. Why bring me home, pick a fight with your sister over it and then give me breakfast? Why so nice?’

  Dhruv shook his head in wonder, ‘So it’s true then, no good deed goes unpunished.’

  She didn’t reply.

  ‘I don’t know what to tell you,’ he said. ‘I guess I’m basically a nice guy.’

  She gave him a sceptical look.

  ‘You don’t think I’m a nice guy?’ he asked, surprised. ‘Why not?’

  She took a thoughtful bite of her toast and decided that an honest answer was the best and unfortunately, riskiest course of action. She took a deep breath.

  ‘Because you’re basically bringing home strange women from the bar, when your ex-girlfriend’s body was discovered just a few days ago.’

  Dhruv gave her a sharp look. He put the toast he was holding back on his plate and wiped his mouth with a napkin. Playing for time, Avantika thought.

  ‘First of all, this is one time we’re talking about. I don’t usually bring home … it’s not a habit, okay? And Laxmi and I…’ he shrugged. ‘We’re not even friends anymore. Weren’t. We weren’t friends.’

  ‘No, but she was Aisha’s best friend, doesn’t that—’

  He pushed back his chair and got up, toast half-eaten on the plate. He didn’t look angry, but his face wore a guarded expression and the easy affability of the morning was gone.

  ‘You’ll have to excuse me,’ he said, ‘but I have a shoot lined up in half an hour, so—’

  ‘Yeah, I’ll push off,’ Avantika said, getting up herself. ‘Thanks for breakfast and … um, everything.’

  He nodded and left without a word.

  Avantika made her way to the room where she had woken up, deep in thought. Dhruv’s reaction to her answer had been defensive as she’d expected. But there was more to it. He could have laughed off the implication, or felt offended; instead, he had shut down. And then, there was the fumbling over tenses.

  Perhaps he was still not used to thinking of Laxmi in the past tense, but that didn’t explain the emphasis with which he denied being friends with her. Questions, more questions to add to the ones she already didn’t have answers to. As she wore her shoes, her phone pinged. It was a Facebook notification—a friend request from Mahira. She gaped at it, feeling foolish. Here she was, having breakfast with Aisha’s brother, when she should’ve been trying to reach Shweta! She looked up her contacts and found the number she had saved.

  As she walked to the door she heard the sound of a car, and through the window saw a sleek black BMW pulling out of the gate. Dhruv sat in the driver’s seat, looking grim.

  Minutes later as she walked out of the gate, she reflected that it was like the saying said—all the good ones were either married, gay or hiding something.

  1997

  It was the lunch break. Or as the girls called it, the long recess. One glorious hour of food and games and gossip, with possibly some last minute homework that refused to get done the night before.

  You could see it happening all over the school. In the corridors, which were locked during the recess. Inside the assembly halls, which were never locked. And on the playground laid with black tar and lined with trees, under which girls, in groups of three and four were engaged in complex games involving clapping and chanting. One group sang:

  Oo-ma Jo-shi ye yeye

  My mothershetoldmesixtyyearsago

  There came-a la-dy knockingatthedoor

  With a ooh, aah, I wantsome baa…

  What the ‘baa’ was remained a mystery, because they were drowned out by another, more pro-establishment group that was yelling on the top of their voices:

  Who stole the cookie from the cookieeeshop?

  Mr A stole the cookie from the cookieeeshop.

  Whome? Yesyou.

  Couldn’tbe. Thenwho?

  Mr B stole the cookie from the cookieeeshop.

  Along the fringes of the playground, a column of hapless ninth standard Blue House girls stomped past, practising marching for the Annual Day parade. In various corners, younger girls sat together, exchanging tiffin boxes and gossip. And in one far corner, away from the rest, Avantika sat alone. A stainless-steel lunch box lay open before her, a twin to the several others you saw around. She pushed up the big brown spectacles that had slipped down her nose and stared at the book that lay open on her lap. This Heathcliff person was clearly mad. Yet oddly attractive. The spoonful of vegetable pulao stayed poised on the way to her mouth. She was about to turn the page, when a shadow fell across it. She looked up.

  ‘Eating alone again, double-battery?’

  It was Aisha. In her shadow, as always, stood the rest of her group—Shweta, Mahira and of course, Laxmi. Avantika gave her a brief look and sighed inwardly. She missed the girl. She missed having someone to laugh with, gossip with; hell, even just to talk to about things other than homework and projects. Everything had been more fun with Laxmi around. Now, school was just a series of days to get through somehow.

  She didn’t let any of this show,
of course, because some vestigial survival instinct in her warned against it. High school was a shark tank. If you were going to swim alone, the least you could do was not let your guard down. They smelled your fear, these girls. Give them one chance, and they’d rip your self-esteem to bits. No, she was better off wearing her loneliness as a badge of honour, tempered by scathing wit and if need be, downright rudeness. I don’t need you, I don’t need any of you, I’m just fiiiiine all by myself. She narrowed her eyes at Aisha. Force fields up, she decided.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘eating alone.’

  ‘Double-battery,’ giggled Mahira. ‘She called you double-battery!’

  Avantika ignored her.

  ‘I guess people just don’t like eating with people who say mean things about others, no?’ Aisha asked with a sweet smile.

  Avantika considered this. She didn’t think ‘idiot’ was a particularly brutal insult. Besides, not knowing that CO² stood for carbon dioxide when you were in the ninth standard was pretty idiotic. But in this school, that kind of language was just unacceptable. It was the kind of talk that could turn you into a social pariah. Calling a spade a spade was all fine, but it simply didn’t do to call an idiot an idiot. Not when it was Mahira. Or in other words, not when it was a friend of Aisha’s.

  Avantika put her spoon down. She’d been eating alone for two months now. She didn’t hate it—there were enough books in the school library to see her through at least another year of alone time. But the power trip was getting irritating. She smiled at the group.

  ‘You know what else they don’t like? Arrogant bitches like you.’

  There was a chorus of gasps, followed by some rapid murmuring. What the heck? Nobody spoke that way to… anyone!

  Aisha blinked.

  ‘Did you just—’

  ‘Did you just call Aisha a … bitch?’ Shweta asked slowly. She looked shocked, but any moment now anger could take over as the lead expression.

  Avantika frowned. Damn it. The glasses were slipping down her nose again. In an alternate universe, perhaps all spectacles were born with a sense of dramatic timing. In this universe, they clearly had no such thing. She pushed them back up.