The Bitter Pill Social Club

by Rohan Dahiya

  “I was heading out, just came to change my shoes. I’m going to Murthal with Jimmy and Karishma for paranthas do you want to me to get you anything?”

  “It’ll be cold by the time you get back I think.”

  “Oh right,” Gayatri chewed her lip, “do you maybe want to come along?”

  “No it’s fine I’m pretty sleepy actually.”

  The door started to close.

  “Gayatri, wait! Isn’t Murthal like halfway to Chandigarh or something?”

  “I don’t know it’s not that far.”

  “Who’s driving?”

  “I’ll drive there, Jimmy on the way back.”

  “Be careful okay? It looks like it’s going to rain again.”

  She beamed at her stepsister and left.

  Surya plugged in her earphones, “Sorry about that. Where were we?”

  “How cute were you just now” Dhiraj chuckled. “Was that your cousin or the new sister?”

  She squeezed her thighs together and blushed.

  “Shut up, where were we?”

  “Okay so Thai or Italian?”

  “Italian, I hate the taste of coconut.”

  “Really? What do you do with South Indian food?”

  “It’s not my favorite honestly.”

  “ARE YOU SERIOUS? How can you not like South Indian food?”

  She laughed. “Why is that such a big deal? I just prefer like normal people food.”

  “But it is normal people food! Not liking that is like hating ice cream. You can’t hate ice cream, okay?”

  “I don’t. I can have a full meal just of ice cream.”

  “Mmm I could have some ice cream off of you for a full meal.”

  She shivered with excitement.

  “Wait, so you’ll meet me midway or something?”

  “Don’t be stupid babe I’ll pick you up. Be ready by 7.”

  “Wow is any restaurant even open that early for dinner?”

  “It’ll take us an hour easily with traffic and then we can get a drink before dinner no?”

  Surya wondered when might be the right time to tell him about her low tolerance for alcohol. She was the designated driver every weekend, roaming around parties with a barely touched glass of whiskey sour, taking sips and wincing behind her hand. One time she’d puked because there was only beer and her burp was so rancid it had burnt her from the inside. It didn’t help that she happened to be at dinner with her mum, Gayatri and her brilliant chief of surgery dad-of-the-year, Dev. They’d put forth the idea of living in the same house and Surya had spluttered into her napkin. Dev and Geetika were terribly upset, though Gayatri didn’t seem to care. Then there was the time in Bangkok when she almost took her top off during karaoke night, but it wasn’t half as bad.

  She looked back at Dhiraj and fantasized tracing his razor sharp cheekbones with her fingers. The wiry oversize frames and thick curly hair made him absolutely irresistible. Although she wouldn’t admit to it, Surya wondered what was wrong with him, where he was hiding his flaws. The most probable one was that he was a sexual deviant, they’d both been very open about the fact that it wasn’t an exclusive thing between them. Dhiraj even mentioned that if she ever wanted to experiment he was open to most things, which could literally open a black hole of messed up shit. Threesomes were too racy for most erotica, and she wasn’t too keen on the idea of sharing. Worse still, he could very probably have a wife on the side, with a kid or two. Not that it had stopped her in the past, but how could she start the next chapter of her life by repeating old mistakes? Surya reasoned with herself – having seen the outcome of girls demanding a definition to relationships, might it be so bad to go with the flow? Her perspective was her own, she decided.

  From the corner of her eye she saw it descend, slowly at first with its legs gracefully looped together and then faster as it drooped to the floor. Just as it was scuttling away to her bathroom, Surya leapt up and smashed the daddy long legs with her slipper. Dhiraj laughed on the other end of the call.

  “Woah, did you see that too?”

  She turned back. “No what happened?”

  Thunder crackled through the sky.

  Surya walked over to her window and saw the bolts of lightning wreaking havoc in the purple sky.

  “Be ready, I’m picking you up.”

  “Where are we going?” she asked already undressing.

  “My favourite spot to watch lightning.” He sniggered.

  “Oh my,” she sighed, “if you keep saying these things I swear I’ll have to fall in love with you.”

  “Why don’t you then?”

  They were driving past Mahipalpur to the tunes of old Bally Sagoo songs, down the flyover where neon signs and tall billboards pierced the sky. Everyone had a habit of laughing at those low budget hotels, saying that they rented rooms out on an hourly basis for lonely couples with nowhere else to go, but really that somehow made them more charming. It was one of Surya’s favourite things about the drive to Gurgaon, the reds and yellows and blinking whites. She always wondered what clandestine affairs went on behind those glass windows, what tired souls slumped on those beds by themselves; who else, if anyone, was there.

  “You know this stretch always kinda reminds me of the Vegas strip.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know what it is though.” She pulled her hair to one side, “It’s not the lights. It’s something else”

  “The lights get very silent you know. Some nights if you drive past them and there’s hardly anyone on the road …”

  She looked at him.

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “Yeah. I bet it is.”

  “I’ve never been to Vegas myself so I’ll have to take your word for it” he switched off the air conditioner as she lit a cigarette.

  “When I went I couldn’t drink or go to a lot of places, so most of my trip was just super touristy stuff and all.”

  “Why?”

  “I was only eighteen ya, and fake IDs don’t work everywhere.”

  He nodded sagely. Light sprays of rain smattered across the windshield.

  “I’ll take you sometime.”

  “To Vegas?”

  “Yeah”

  She regretted it immediately. That was such a weird thing to say, more so on a first date with someone she’d spent all of five hours in her life on a random Pokémon Go date-thing. She looked back out the window and crumpled into herself. To at once shine a light so far into the future where they might still be together, or hint that she would want them to be together, it was enough to drive her to suicide. When she looked back to him, he had a weird cocked eyebrow and she blushed, turning back to the comfort of the lights.

  “That was stupid …” she muttered.

  He laughed as if he’d been holding it in. “Stop, it’s fine. No judgments here.”

  “No I’m sorry I just made everything so awkward.”

  “For whom?”

  She struggled to find an answer that wasn’t narcissistic because Dhiraj was unfazed as ever.

  “Anyway, where are we going tonight?”

  “We’re getting sushi from a food truck, there’s wine in the back seat, and we’re going to park at this particular spot where you can see the whole sky.”

  She shuddered a sigh. “Is there anything else or can we just get married already?”

  The sound of his unbridled laugh set her on fire from within.

  The look on his face when the basket of wasabi fries came in told her everything she needed to know, it told her she was already falling for him. He saw the difference in her, as if someone had whispered a permission to let go halfway through her second glass of wine. She threw her head back when she laughed, she didn’t care about the grease on her fingers or spilling soy sauce on her tshirt. Surya Shroff was completely at ease in the illusion that they were the only two people who existed in that moment.

  When he reached out and plucked the cigarette from her mouth to take a drag, when
he put a hand through her hair, when he smiled at her three seconds too long, it wasn’t cheap. She looked at his face and wondered when the entitlement would come through, the one that made him believe she had to sleep with him for making her have such a good time. She told herself to give it one hour, the last hour of the night before, and then she would think no more of it. And it never came; his face had that boyish vulnerability successfully disarming her with every crack of thunder.

  She wasn’t aware of her fidgeting hands till he had them wrapped in his. Surya looked down and saw the dent in her little finger – the strangest deformity caused by years of typing with one hand. She wove her fingers through his and found a similar though not as deep indentation on his right hand. They kissed as the streetlights dimmed unaware that lightning had struck ground close by.

  He unhooked his chin from the space where her neck curved into a shoulder. The world was upside down and his guts churned. His mouth felt like someone had stuffed it with cotton balls, and the tiny slivers of dawn peeking in from the window were like death rays. Sunaina was snuggled deep into his chest, hands curled up in tiny fists under her chin. He tentatively reached out for water and drank the whole bottle, drifting back to sleep almost immediately.

  Lakshman woke up again when she turned to her side, so they were spooning, but sleep took over again.

  The bed was possibly the most comfortable one she’d ever slept on. The way the blanket cocooned her feet it was like being in a cloud burrito, except it was possible that the actual bed had nothing to do with it. The arm around her was strong, the chest breathing against her back a solid wall of warmth. She couldn’t not take his hand and bring it to her lips.

  They woke up and parted with sleepy smiles and a good morning. While she brushed her teeth he stood outside and smoked, filling his lungs with the cool mid-morning air. She came out and looped an arm around his neck, reaching out for the cigarette. Sharing his cigarette, holding him, it was as easy as breathing.

  They went for a breakfast of toast and eggs with extra strong coffee and it was back to the room. The temperature was rising again and the fort didn’t offer much shade. An hour’s nap later, they walked down to the pool armed with their Raybans and sunblock.

  Lakshman held onto her things as she walked right into the pool, smoothly swimming to the other side. Unsurprisingly he had another playlist humming up from the little speaker as the poolside chair was set up. He took the lotion and rubbed it all over, giving her incentive to come up for air.

  He looked glorious in that sunlight, just beginning to sweat; she wiped her hands and took a photo. He didn’t even look and she trailed circles around him like a hawk, taking photos. He cocked a smile and grabbed the phone from her. His own jump into the pool wasn’t as graceful because he was too focused on taking her down with him. They called for beer that came with glasses so cold they had icicles on the surface. The sky above them was the bluest blue they’d ever seen.

  He wiped her brow with a thumb. “You look so beautiful right now.”

  She blushed behind her sunglasses.

  “What about every other day?”

  “Every other day you’re like a five or whatever. Right now you’re something else.”

  He grazed the skin of her neck.

  “Why’d you cut your hair, Sunaina?”

  The sound of her name on his lips set loose a thousand and one butterflies in her.

  “You don’t like it like this?”

  “I love it like this.” He moved closer to her.

  She pushed herself up to sit by the edge and he positioned himself so her leg was draped over one of his shoulders, barely inches away from his cheek. She realized if he in that moment were to kiss her leg she might die.

  “I love this, thanks for bringing me with you.”

  He tilted his head and grazed her leg with the side of his head.

  “It reminds me of the pool we have at my granddad’s house. The one in the hills.”

  “Wow I haven’t been there since … do you remember the last time we went there?”

  “I think it was the summer vacation of ‘02, no?”

  They smiled at the memory of running through the tomato garden, a large house with beige walls surrounded by mountains on all sides. The entire length of the back of the house was covered with bougainvillea, which her granddad primed himself, trimming and replanting whenever necessary. It was the real pride of his life, aside from his children because Hassan was ignorant, because Geetu couldn’t keep her shit together, and because Kama, well with her the proverbial shit had hit the fan a long time ago.

  Sunaina remembered endless days spent with fresh juice and pancakes under the wall of flowers. The table was somewhat of a family union, a place where everyone had a proper seat with proper plate settings. It was where Commander Kochhar had seen his grandchildren grow up, growing taller every year till their end of the table didn’t look as empty. She and Surya had run their summers around the garden picking wildflowers for the table to surprise him.

  “Sorry I’m just getting carried away” she laughed.

  He kissed her leg, handing the cigarette back to her.

  “Don’t be. I’m glad this place made you think of him.” And then, “I’ve missed you”.

  She wrapped a lock of his hair around her finger. “I’ve missed you too.”

  They drank their beer with the warm sun beating down on them, fiddling in and out of the pool, and everything was good. There was no talk of the people they’d left behind or things that didn’t matter anymore. He made her turn off all notifications so her phone wouldn’t constantly be buzzing where they’d abandoned it. She fought the now familiar urge to fling it like a discus over the ledge. She walked out of the pool and draped one of the enormous blue and white striped towels around her, parading with the grace of a pageant queen. He took a photo that was more blur than her but saved it anyway. It was Sunaina as no one looked at her, hair curling as it dried, all signs of stress gone from her forehead. He pulled two chairs together so they could sit close together while he rolled a joint. She stared at him humming softly whenever a song sounded familiar.

  Lakshman lit the joint and blew the smoke straight into her face. She inhaled deeply and smiled. The wind itself grew cooler as bulbous clouds gathered above them. They lay back and he showed her silver linings that stretched almost all the way across the sky. She leaned over him and taught him blowbacks and they just lazed there giggling with hands cupping their mouths. Soon it was too cool to get back into the pool or maybe they were just too high, so they sat with their feet dipped in for a while. The sun vanished behind concrete clouds. In the sudden threat of a storm, the colours around them bloomed vibrantly. She loved when that happened, looking back at the fort walls she could see where the foliage was veining up in bursts of green against manila.

  Flip flops and all in hand, they ran back to the room just as the rain began pelting at them. Taking a hot shower didn’t help much, it possibly made the high worse. The room was freezing and Lakshman was sitting cross legged on the floor with the doors open and he looked at her, his profile brilliantly illuminated, and she knew she was falling. She knelt behind him and wrapped him in her arms. His nose skimmed her neck and planted a soft kiss.

  “Do you want some uncle chips?”

  He beamed at her, “That’s the best thing anyone’s ever said to me in my life.”

  The ride home had been torture. She was sure they’d left a piece of them back at the fort, wrapped up in that stupidly soft blanket. She’d kept pace with conversation, he’d made jokes throughout, but their hearts weren’t in it. As the sun had set behind them they drove in silence. Her hand was perched between them so he could hold it whenever his was free. Sometimes he’d take their entwined fingers and press them to his lips, not in an obvious kiss but something more reverent.

  In no time at all she found herself staring down her front door with a hand raised to the doorbell, fighting it for as long as she could. He w
atched her in silence from the car. They heaved a sigh in unison, she unaware of his watchful gaze. Chanda opened the door and dramatically welcomed her home. As if on instinct she looked back right before entering and waved at him, a final fleeting moment of that stolen happiness returned. The door closed with a loud bang but it fell on deaf ears. Sunaina felt the blood drain from her face as a shadow moved through the living room, her father’s inimitable form walking to the bar.

  “Dad” she spoke tentatively, peeking through the door.

  “Sana! My Darling! How are you?” he swooped her up in a grand embrace.

  Hassan Kochhar only loved two things in life, his beautiful daughter and making obscene amounts of money. He had a penchant for single malts, Cuban cigars, and casual flirting he liked to refer to as ‘healthy’. It wasn’t clear, nor may it ever be, whether he actually enjoyed these things or whether they were borrowed ideals of the finer things in life inherited from his own father.

  In growing up Sunaina had felt him drift further and further away. Somewhere between chartered work trips and private parties of the social club, she’d lost her dad. The days when he used to make her sit on his shoulders, run around after her, be her best friend, they were now only memories that were so sweet they tasted bitter. She held on to them like she held on to old photographs in which she didn’t look nice, tucked into the last page of the photo album.

  “I’m good papa, this is quite a surprise though …”

  She watched him pour a drink, telling herself it wasn’t a dream.

  “I hope it’s a good one,” he laughed aloud. It wasn’t his real laugh though, it was the kinds he saved for parties or when he was hosting a formal dinner. It was the laugh that sounded wholehearted but lacked any real emotion, one that she’d heard far too many times.

  “Of course papa. I’m just … I can’t believe you’re actually here. I haven’t seen you in so long.”

  Eleven months, she reminded herself.

  “I know my love I know, but now I’m here Sana. Papa’s home and he’s not leaving you.”

  “But what–”

  “Sit down I need to have a word with you Sana.” She gawked at him. “I’m serious, please sit with me for a bit. I have something I want to share with you.”