I pick up the phone as soon as it rings, but it’s not him.
‘You took my ring?’ Sonia straightaway launches an attack.
‘I just took the ring I had paid for,’ I reply caustically.
‘And you think money can make it yours? It can make Samir yours?’ She challenges me loudly, too loudly.
It dawns on me what that the ring meant to her. It was a memory of their times together. Like those butterfly earrings are to me. She was clinging on to it even when she tried to take her life. Perhaps she does really love Samir. I can feel her pain. I know what it feels like to be one of Samir’s EXperiences, to reach EXpiry and see him EXit from your life. I have been there twice.
‘Sonia, I am sorry,’ I try to tell her that I never wanted to hurt her.
‘Don’t be,’ she says indifferently, her voice losing the malice. ‘It was never mine. Not the ring. Not Samir’s heart. I am actually glad it’s over. I wish I had listened to Radhika all those years ago when she told me that Samir is madly in love with a plain Jane. Anyway, I am leaving for Spain to erase my scars.’
I can’t believe what Sonia is saying. Samir was in love with a plain Jane, as in me? Radhika must have misunderstood our romance at her wedding. She probably didn’t know that Samir was only interested in me for his book. I might have been his muse for the book, but I am definitely not the one his heart beats for.
As if I don’t already have enough problems to deal with, I see Sarika marching towards me. I had seen the Dreams Wedding Limited banner earlier so I knew they had a really big stall. I just wasn’t particularly hoping to run into her.
‘Aha…I see that you’re still afloat, huh?’ she remarks haughtily.
‘No thanks to you,’ I reply curtly.
‘Hmm, still ill-mannered and arrogant! So, how does it feel to use someone’s boyfriend for your benefits?’ Sarika says with derision. She has some nerve blaming me.
‘Of all people you should know the feeling, Sarika. I can’t deny I learnt all about benefits and business from you,’ I respond, enjoying her unease.
She makes a disgusting face and leaves. It feels good to get back.
It’s a cool Sunday morning. October has brought with it the crisp air of festivities. I am sitting at the coffee table looking out over the balcony. Sharma Aunty is watering the Tulsi plant in the balcony. A maid is gossiping on her phone in the balcony below, while the twin brats she watches are asleep. A neglected crossword sheet stares back at me from the table. My mind is busy cajoling my bruised heart to focus on ‘5 Down’ but my heart is longing for a perfect Sunday. The maid gives me hot ginger tea with an aloo paratha, but it still doesn’t make my Sunday perfect. There is no light-hearted banter, no stinky smell and no Samir.
It’s been a week since he walked out from the apartment. He later sent someone from his office to collect his stuff. Believe me, I am trying hard to forget and I may have succeeded if only everything in the house wouldn’t keep reminding me of him. Even the aloo paratha reminds me of him. I take a sip of tea and let it soothe my soul.
Mansi joins me at the table, takes one bite from my plate, looks at her oily fingers and says, ‘Yikes! Where is Samir? I like his parathas. This cook’s love is in the oil!’
Mansi and I haven’t synced in a while. First she was away for work and then I was working late at nights for the carnival, so she has no idea that Samir has left the apartment and me.
I don’t want to tell Mansi about our break-up. I haven’t told anyone. I am thinking if I keep shut about it, it will somehow disappear.
‘He has gone to the US to meet his nephew. His sister just had a baby,’ I relay the information I was given by his colleague, Payal when she met me at the carnival yesterday. It’s Samir I had been longing to run into, but I get Payal instead and she crushed all my hopes.
‘So how did the finale event go?’ Mansi asks, sipping an awful looking extract of carrot, gooseberry and beetroot.
‘We lost,’ I casually shrug my shoulders.
Mansi seems lost. She is not listening to me.
‘Didn’t Samir tell you anything?’ she asks.
I give her a vague questioning look, wondering if she knows about whatever Samir said to me. I don’t offer any information, but I tell her about my encounter with Sarika and we both laugh about it.
The weeks pass by. I immerse myself in work. Thankfully, there is plenty of it. Gods are back in action and there are lots of auspicious dates for people to get married. I am thinking of consulting a pandit myself to find a good moment to message Samir since Facebook tells me that he is back in town. There’s an FB picture of him holding his nephew, looking adorable with a baby in his arms.
Another imperfect Sunday is here. It’s almost noon. Mansi left for a shopping appointment in the morning but I am still in my night suit. Papa and Didi finished their crossword long back. I haven’t even looked at it.
I have been whiling away my time trying various score-your-love-compatibility games with our names to determine if Samir loves me. They aren’t helping. I am wondering if I should go bathe when the doorbell rings. For a moment, I perk up at the sound, thinking its Samir. He never takes his keys. I excitedly open the door and find Sharma Aunty instead, in a crisp, light green cotton saree. I can see that she is trying to hold it together though she is broken from inside. Like me. I invite her in.
‘Beta, this is Samir’s poetry book. Please give it to him.’ Aunty hands me a small, red-jacketed notebook.
I had seen it lying on the futon earlier but never knew Samir wrote poetry in it.
‘Your Uncle had lot of fun sharing his poetry with Samir. I have no idea how he did it, but Samir always brightened up the darkest of his days,’ Aunty says softly, her throat choked with tears.
I don’t know what to say to someone who has just lost a life-partner of fifty years. I offer to make her some tea.
‘He is really unique, that boy,’ Aunty says, a little composed as she sips her tea. ‘It’s hard to find such unselfish kinds today.’
I say nothing. I don’t want to tarnish Samir’s image in her mind. He really was very kind to them. He was a very helpful friend to me too. He is just not the life-long companion variety.
‘You are a very lucky girl,’ Aunty smiles at me lovingly as she finishes the tea. ‘Samir often said to your uncle that he wants to grow old with you, like the two of us. Bless you both, beta,’ she says and gets up slowly to leave.
I don’t know what he told Uncle about us. It could have been a part of faking for the reality show. I randomly flip through his poetry book. It feels good to hold a part of him in my arms. Some old poems are very dark. The recent ones are livelier. The last one is about a girl he loves. I read it again and again and cry. I wonder if he could have meant it for me. I want to believe he does. I replay the argument in my head again, as I have already done umpteen times. Perhaps I was too quick to judge. But I did ask him everything so clearly. I am re-evaluating each of his answers when Mansi barges into the house.
‘You broke up with Samir?’ she asks, clearly miffed, ‘and you didn’t tell me?!'
‘I didn’t break up. He did. And I didn’t tell because I didn’t want to dwell on the past. You only keep telling me to move ahead,’ I reply indignantly.
‘He couldn’t have,’ she says, disbelieving me. ‘What did you do?’
‘What do you mean what did I do? I offered myself on a platter and he chose to write a book instead on our story,’ I say sulkily. She is supposed to side with me. Why is she defending him?
‘Do you know he was going to propose to you at the finale event?’ Mansi says.
I give her a don’t-fuck-with-me look.
‘Oh Meg! He made me practise so many times, it’s not funny. I even told him about Vir and he was okay with it.’
I stare wide-eyed at Mansi with a doleful expression on my face. So Sharma Aunty was telling the truth. Samir did want to grow old with me. He even wrote that poem for me. I start crying.
/> ‘Listen, I know I have always told you that men only want sex,’ Mansi talks to me like a mature adult. ‘I still believe that. But if I had to bet on one asshole, it would be S. S-(ing)-hol.’
I laugh feeling lighter and happier than I have in weeks.
‘By the way, I am moving in with Neeraj today,’ Mansi mentions offhandedly. ‘We intend to live-in like you guys and test our love.’
And then seeing the ghastly look on my face, she says, ‘I had no idea you had broken up with Samir. Okay, I can wait till you call Samir.’
I call immediately but his phone is switched off. I call Payal to check and she reminds me that Samir Sir has already left for Maldives. But of course, most of my team is also leaving tonight for Maldives for the wedding. I want to go too. But I don’t have a ticket or a visa. And I can’t risk Papa getting another heart attack because I visited a water body purer than any river in India, but unfortunately outside the holy supervision of the Indian Gods. There is only one person who can help me now. I call Didi, while Mansi goes to her room to pack.
‘I need your help’.
‘You babysit Diyu for four hours next weekend,’ Di bargains upfront.
‘Why four? Last time it was three!’ I argue. She is taking unfair advantage of my desperation.
‘Bye. Talk to you later,’ she is about to disconnect when I agree grudgingly, ‘Ok, whatever.’
‘So how much money do you want to borrow?’ she asks.
How does she know I want money? Well I guess I am always short on money.
‘It’s not only money. I also need you to convince Ma-Papa for something,’ I say, sheepishly.
‘Hey, you aren’t pregnant before marriage, are you?’ She is amused. ‘I’m afraid it’s going to be twelve hours of babysitting for that!’
‘Hell with babysitting, Di. I need to go to the Maldives. Tonight.’
‘Oh, but you were anyway supposed to go there with Samir right, for work?’ She sounds baffled.
I recount the entire story in short.
‘Whoa! You decided to forgo Maldives because you had a fight with Samir?’
I try to tell her that it was more than a fight. It was a MAJOR fight, but she ignores me completely, like she always does. ‘Mehu baby you must really love this guy to forgo Maldives for him.’
Thank god, she gets the conclusion right, although her derivation is a bit screwed.
‘I will do the bookings. Consider this as a wedding gift from my side. But the babysitting hours are still required.’
‘What about Ma-Papa?’ I ask.
And then she reveals the entire prophecy to me, enjoying each and every one of my gasps and OMGs. ‘So as long as you are with Samir, you are good.’
‘But Di, you don’t believe in all this prophecy bakwaas, do you?’ I ask.
‘Prophecy is only someone’s thought. A thought by itself is nothing, Meha; your belief makes it true or false. Believing is like feeding oxygen to a thought. So believe in your love and go get Samir.’
Wow. Di is smart. I thank her profusely and promise to notify her as soon as I get hold of Samir and extract a kiss.
My MJ tunes to ‘Muskurane ki wajah tum ho, gungunane ki wajah tum ho…’ as I board the flight the next day to Male, Maldives.
Be My Nothing
Decorated in bubblegum pink and deep peach, the wedding venue is delectable. A colour palette so yummy, I could eat it! The fragrant and fresh, pineapple-flower vases, clustering around the tall transparent centrepiece on each table, compliment the lively colours. They were NetGen’s idea. The team is busy getting the place ready for the lunch. I know I ought to meet them, but first things first. I need to confess my love and for that I need some liquid courage. I head to the bar set in a glass pagoda, surrounded by palm trees. I take a sip of the Sangria and look around.
My heart misses a beat as I spot Samir in a light-blue, open shirt and white shorts. He is standing farther away from the bar counter facing the beach, holding his camera in his hands, his back towards me. In a few moments, he turns around and starts walking towards the bar, looking down at his phone. I quickly gulp down the whole glass.
‘Shining in the sand and sun like a pearl upon the ocean, come and feel me…oh feel me,’ crooning the song that always lands me in his arms, I purposely collide with the crisp linen shirt. His eyes sparkle with happiness briefly as they meet mine before they become dark and dull.
‘Sorry, I hope I didn’t hurt you,’ I apologize.
‘You couldn’t have,’ he says gruffly, his body rigid at our contact.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Can’t break what is already broken, can you?’ he answers cryptically, as he bends down to pick up his fallen sunshades.
Ouch. He looks like someone put him into a blender and hit the whip button. I bite my lips in regret. He is hurt. Very hurt. But it was not all my fault. He could have given me some signs of his plans to propose to me. And he shouldn’t have kept the book a secret. And it’s not like I haven’t suffered enough.
‘Brokenhearted! That makes two of us.’
‘Really? You look all shiny and bright.’
Not fair. Just because I managed to schedule a facial at the last minute, before the flight and I look all polished, doesn’t make my heart any less bruised. He has no idea how much I have cried in last two weeks. Except for the pain in his eyes, Samir looks fit and fine too. His sinewy arms tanned, possibly by being out in the ocean for the yacht shoot yesterday. His face is taut. His lips are soft and…
‘So do you still love me…er…your ex-live-in-girlfriend?’ I ask, trying to focus.
‘Love is a co-experienced positive emotion. Without reciprocation, it can’t go very far just like a bicycle with one punctured tyre,’ he says with a wry smile. ‘What about you? Do you still love your ex-live-in-boyfriend?’
‘That’s why I am here. You see, the guy who broke my heart, my ex-live-in-boyfriend, he is the wedding photographer here,’ I whisper secretively.
‘Aha! Him I’ve met. He’s a good guy,’ Samir says, a little more relaxed now that he knows I am here for him. ‘He told me his girlfriend dropped him like third-period French?’
‘See, that’s the thing. He has got it all wrong. I didn’t leave him,’ I defend my position.
‘Well you call a guy an opportunist, insensitive and promiscuous and you still expect him to stick around?’ Samir snaps angrily. ‘If you want a loyal dog, you better look in a pet store.’
I didn’t exactly call him those names. I think he is overreacting. Maybe it’s the heat getting to him. Winning him back seems harder than putting toothpaste back in the tube.
‘Hey, is your ex-live-in-girlfriend the one who is planning this wedding? I thought I saw you two steal an intimate, we-go-far-back-in-time look a while back?’
‘Yup, she’s the one,’ he admits.
‘What a coincidence!’ I exclaim. ‘Isn’t it amazing that we must meet like this at a wedding planned by our EXes? Would you care for some cool beer, so we can further EXplore our connection?’
‘Umm…I’ve actually got to be going,’ he says indecisively.
Why is he being so stubborn?
‘Just so you know, I am the most B-U-T-full chick available at this wedding. You won’t get buttier company’.
His face softens at our shared joke. There is almost a hint of smile trying to reach his eyes. He leans forward a bit. I think he is going to kiss me and I desperately want him too. Oh no, he is looking away. He is still angry. I need a change of tactics here. Mansi always said that men are like cats. Chase them and they run away. Ignore them and they come running to you.
So as I quickly spot NetGen in the distance, I say, ‘Sorry. I got to go. Duty is calling. Maybe we can meet at the beach later in the evening if you have time.’
I turn to leave. I am almost worried I’ve made a mistake when a vague ‘ok-see-ya’ reaches my ears. I raise my hand in thumbs up casually to let him know I heard him and walk away.
I quickly shower and get into my most comfortable clothes. No clinging bottoms. No plunging neckline. I am playing it uber cool.
I find Samir seated at the open restaurant by the beach, in casual light brown dungarees and a plain dark brown, round neck tee.
‘Look who is here!’ he says feigning surprise at running into me. ‘We do have a special EXtra connect!’ he jokes lightheartedly.
There is nothing more joyful than seeing the smile on a face you love. As I take the seat opposite him, the sea breeze blows my hair all over. I tie it back with a scarf. For a few minutes, we just sit in shared silence. Looking at the last rays of the sun disappear in the vastness of the ocean. Watching the restless waves travel for miles only to shower their love on the shore and become one with it and then start the journey all over again. It is like when you love someone, you have to offer it up constantly—to cherish the other person. Just being together cannot make a relationship last forever, it takes endless moments of love to make it forever.
‘Samir,’ I am unwilling to break the lovely silence, but I need to say it before it’s too late.
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