Part-Time Devdaas... (12 page)

The waiter came to our shack.

“Hi, get me a large JD with coke, and...” I turned to Aditi.

“Virgin mojito,” she said.

“Okay, anything else, sir?”

“Well that’s all for now.”

“Perfect,” the waiter said and left.

“So what triggered the generosity of spending time with me today, huh?” she said folding her legs on the sofa.

“Nothing, was happy and I didn’t want to be alone.” I smiled. “Besides I owed you a treat for my birthday.”

“Thanks, come let’s take a walk around the sushi bar. Aren’t you hungry?”

“I am but, you’ll have to find me something to eat. I cannot tell what’s what.” She laughed on hearing that.

The sushi bar was an amazing colourful sight with all sorts of rice rolls, buns, shrimps, mushrooms, different types of raw fish and meat, red, green and yellow sauces, and the villain, the
wasabi
. I had burnt my mouth by eating a spoonful of it the first time I had been to a sushi place. I couldn’t understand how something so beautiful could taste that fiery. I rejected one thing after the other as I walked past the platters. I looked at Aditi who had swiftly filled her plate with all the exotic stuff. I was supremely flustered looking at the alien looking food. I turned to Aditi for help and she bit her lower lip to control her laughter. I held her neck in an attempt to mock strangulate her. 

“Cruel girl!!!” I said, “Couldn’t your dad own an Indian restaurant.” I began to laugh with her.

“Poor baby, let me help.”

My plate was full in a matter of seconds. Aditi kept tossing one thing after another on my plate. We returned to our shack with our plates piled high with food. I prayed and skeptically put a piece in my mouth. This time, surprisingly, whatever I ate tasted good.

“Nice?” Aditi asked.

“You saved me!”

“Cool… now order me another drink.”

“You finished it already?” I said as she fluttered her eyelashes at me.

“Is that enough for you to call for another drink for me?”

“
Bevdi!
” I smiled and signalled the waiter to repeat the order.

“What’s with you today? You’ve been smiling throughout.” Her curious eyes bore into me.

“I had a sudden epiphany of sorts that I have a life and am allowed to be happy in it.”

The waiter brought the drinks.

“And who was stopping you all this while.”

“Me.”

“Okay. Why?” she asked taking a sip from my glass.

“Long story.”

“How long?”

“Really long.”

“Well, the evening’s just started and we have a lot of time, so start.”

“Hmm, there was a girl and I loved her. She loved me too and life was bliss. Years passed and she fell out of love. I found out and thought it was as phase. Months passed but nothing changed. I was hurt and she was not happy. I couldn’t bear it, so I broke up with her, end of story.” I said and took a deep breath.

It wasn’t as if I was being secretive or anything, but for years after my break up with Hrida, I was looking for closure. After a really long time, I was happy. I had lost unaccountable number of things and people after the break up and I had no intention of ruining the happy space I was in by going through all of it again. So I zoomed through seven years in a single breath.

“You did the right thing. I wish my parents had realised it before I was born. I would have been spared of misery of being divided between both of them,” she said and for the first time since I met her, I saw sadness in her eyes.

“It took them thirteen years of a bad marriage to realise that they were misfits.”

I had no words to console her.

“Nothing could match up to the pain of seeing your parents behave like strangers with each other. Pasting notes on the refrigerator to talk to each other, sleeping in different rooms, going separately to the family functions, waiting for the other to finish the dinner to avoid sitting at the dinner table at the same time, bringing you different cakes on your birthday and finally moving out of the house,” she subtly dabbed her watered eyes.

“I still remember the day when dad shifted out of the house. I cuddled up to myself on the couch and watched him pack his bags. My mom left the house without even looking at him. I simply don’t understand how people who claim to be in love suddenly choose to disregard each others’ existence. I will never forget the look on my dad’s face when he left.

“For almost a year after my dad left, I would pray that somehow my mom and dad would fall in love with each other again. I wanted to be back with both of them, but none of the prayers worked. Mom filed for divorce. I felt intense bitterness towards god when their divorce came through, but I guess god has no jurisdiction over things like love. It’s been four years since then and a lot has changed. Mom’s got a boyfriend and she is all set to marry him. Dad is already married with a child, yet sometimes that twelve-year-old me wants my parents to be back together,” she smiled and shook her head.

Sometimes you are so taken over by your pain that you curse God for being unfair to you, but then you realise that there are people with far more heartbreaking stories.  

“You want another drink?” I asked, and she began to laugh.

Bandra to Marine Drive and back in fifty-three minutes. I wish that could happen in the day. At midnight it was rather pleasant without honking cabs, unruly bus drivers and red lights. I looked at Aditi. All the way, she rested her chin on the door looking outside. I could see her smiling in the left rear view mirror of the car. The cold midnight air blew through her hair. The tears had spread the eyeliner but her face was beaming with happiness. In spite of all the bitter things happening around her, she somehow found a way to be happy. I smiled to myself. As we neared our complex, she closed the window and sat stiff in her seat. She was visibly disturbed.

“Hey, is everything alright?” I asked.

“Ya, I’m fine. Just don’t stop the car,” she said in a scared voice.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, let’s just go home fast.”

I noticed a couple of bikes trailing us. One of them overtook us and skid the bike to halt in front of the car. One of the three guys jumped off the bike and walked towards the door where Aditi was sitting. When the attempt to open it failed, he began shout at the top of his voice.

“How long are you going to sit in there?” Renzil screamed.

“Stay in the car; do not come out!” Aditi said to me and before I could say anything, she unlocked the door and got out of the car.”

“So finally I caught you red-handed, you bloody whore. What the fuck are you doing with him?”

“Who the hell are you to ask me that?”

“I am your boyfriend, you understand? I am your boyfriend...”

“You were… I told you six months ago that it’s over. Why don’t you just leave me alone?”

“It will be over when I say so, you bitch,” he said and pushed her on the car. That was my cue to get out. As soon as I got out, the rest of the roaches surrounded me. I tried to make way, but one of them pushed me back.

“What does he have that I don’t? Car, money, great body? Huh?”

“It has nothing to do with him. You are a fucking loser.” Renzil slapped her.

I got agitated and slammed two of the boys on the road. I ran to Renzil and held him by his neck and pinned him on the car. Hearing the commotion, two beat marshals on patrol whistled from a distance. The rest of the boys ran away, leaving Renzil behind.

“Let go of me, you asshole,” Renzil said struggling to escape from my grip.

“What’s the hurry? Let the cops see your machogiri.”

As the cops neared us, tears began to flow out of his eyes and all the machismo suddenly disappeared. I loosened my grip.

“Get in the car.” I told Aditi as I saw the beat marshals stop near us.

“Is everything alright?” One of the officers asked. “What are you doing out so late?”

“Yes kaka, no problem. We were just leaving.”

“Leave right now,” the other officer thundered.

“Right away,” I said and turned to Renzil and menacingly whispered, “If you ever come near Aditi again, I’ll squeeze all the masculinity out of your crotch, do you understand?”

“Yes.” He said obediently and walked away.

I sat in the car and drove Aditi straight home. The incident had shaken her so much that she was trembling. I put my arm around her to console her.

“Don’t worry, everything is fine now,” I said as we walked out of the lift. “He won’t bother you anymore.” I opened my door.

“Can I sleep at your place? I’m scared to be alone.”

“Alright!”

That night, after I put her to bed, I sat alone at the window thinking about all the miseries people are in. I wondered who writes such cruel fates for people. Does anyone on earth have a perfect life? Would my life have been perfect had I been with Hrida today? Was there any guarantee? As always, I had no answers, but finally I had accepted the change in my life.

I
don’t remember at what I had been staring since my mind had transported me to la-la land and placed me on the well manicured lawns under the soothing orange light of setting sun in the sea. I was talking to Hrida with my eyes closed. She was right next to me, her head resting sideways on my arm. She was playing with petals of a flower, giggling at my inanest of jokes.

“I love you baby,” she said and gently kissed my cheek.

“I love you too,” I replied. And as soon as I said that, there was a thud leaving me in excruciating pain.

Eight months back, when I first saw this four-feet-five-inches gnome-like professor, I felt bad for the man. His round brown face, grey hair pasted on the scalp with oil, reddish brown teeth as result of excessive chewing of gutka, extra small shirt that stank of horse shit, twenty-two inch waist trousers, and size four shoes were totally pitiful.

‘Surveying I & II, Prof Santosh Singh’
He wrote on the board standing on a stool the first day he came to class. God shouldn’t be so cruel to anyone, I had thought. To add to his misery, someone saw his ding dong while peeing in the loo. The boy who saw it said it resembled an eraser; the news spread like wild fire. Since then, the students all over campus began calling him Eraser.

I tried to figure out how such a short man had managed to smack my head when I was sitting on a three-feet bench. However he had done it; it inflicted so much pain that out of anger, I considered picking him up and throwing him out of the window. I suppressed my wrath realising submissions’ season was about to start and any act of vengeance would cost me my whole term’s work.

“Is anyone up for a bet? I say this dreamy head won’t make it across sem four to third year,” he looked at the class, brazenly excavating leftover food from his teeth with a match stick.

“No one? really?” He began to laugh. “See, even your classmates know you won’t make it.”

In a normal case scenario, I would have gotten back with something equally ‘ass-holish’, but at that moment I had become thick-skinned. I buried my head in the drawing sheet and went back to Hrida and her thoughts. Thankfully, the lecture ended in a minute’s time but there was one more painful session left towards the end of the day and if I wanted to make my attendance for the first lecture count, I would have had to stay back.

“The gods must be really pleased with me today to have gifted me with your presence in both my lectures,” Prof Singh said acrimoniously as I walked into his classroom for the last lecture. I went to my desk without acknowledging his presence, further inviting his tartness. For the next two hours, the prick unleashed his bitterness at me by asking random questions and calling me names.

“So is this dumbness hereditary or have you painstakingly developed it?” he said and laughed. “What!
d
on’t you find it funny?” He began to point at the students.

“Yes you, it is funny, isn’t?” he asked one of the medal bearers.

“Yes, yes sir,” he said smiling reluctantly.

“Then why don’t you laugh?” He said forcing him to laugh.

Then asking one student after another, he made the whole class laugh at me. My patience was wearing thin. I was just a millimeter away from splattering him like a bug on the board. I cursed Raghu for pulling me to college. I would have happily waited for Hrida outside her college rather than getting verbally raped by the Lilliputian bastard.

Raghu rode the bike back from college. There was complete silence on the bike. A feeling of total worthlessness deluged me after the lecture. The bastard had quite literally fucked my mind sore. It felt like I had been run over by a speeding road train. I don’t know what these professors intend to achieve by applying mincing-the-morale-of-the-students technique. For me it only bred hatred for engineering. With each passing semester’s tormenting syllabus and professors, my resolve to run away became stronger. But I had to make a move, and fast. The rancidness of the course was forcing me to question my own credibility.
Soon,
I promised myself. I sorely needed Hrida so that my life loathing feelings could be anesthetised. 

“You go, I’ll get a smoke,” Raghu said as he braked outside the naka.

It began to rain behind me as I walked in. I tapped Hrida’s shoulder and before she could turn to me, I sat on a chair next to her.

“What’s wrong baby?” she said looking at me carefully.

“Why what happened?” my tone gave away the abjection within me.

“Your face looks flushed.”

“Oh that, no nothing happened, I’m just too tired,” I said as I caught the cigarette packet that Raghu threw at me.

“Really?” She paused, her eyes on me. “Is that how you are going to dodge it?” she asked raising an eyebrow.

“Poncho got raped by a baby penis-ed professor today.” Raghu said lighting a match stick for me.

“Why?
w
hat did you do?” Hrida asked surprised.

“I didn’t do anything, the guy is a prick,” I said as I took a long drag and exhaled the smoke.

‘The monster ravaged my poor girl’s innocence,’ Raghu mock wept as he stroked my hair and began to laugh.

‘You dished me out to him bitch. I’m never listening to you again,’ I jabbered.

Hrida softly pinched my cheek. A smile propped on my face.

And just like that, all the irritation disappeared. Hrida’s charm worked yet again. Maybe it was really Hrida’s charm and love for me or maybe I had started believing that she could make all my miseries and hurt disappear. Either way, it worked for me.

“I just wish I had enough guts to tell dad that I want to quit,” I said.

“Quitting is fine and if you decide to do it, your father will understand. The question is what you will do after that.”

“I don’t know.” I said putting another cigarette in my mouth, “What will it take for you to pick it up?” I snapped at Raghu getting annoyed by the whirring of his phone vibrating on the table.

“Then, till you know it, hang in there,” she said and pulled the cigarette out of my mouth and crushed it.

“Hey, are you here?” Raghu asked.

“Who are you talking to?” I asked Raghu.

“Okay, wait I’ll come,” he said and hung up. “Give me some change.”

“Who’s coming?” I asked, handing him my wallet.

“Kintu!” Raghu said with an evil grin. He took some money out of my wallet and left.

“What?”

Cut to 1995:

First day of the school, standard seven.

I was more than happy to return to school. In my first year of the new school, I had become friends with Shashank and Devika, and this year Raghu too was shuffled to my class so I was looking forward to it. I sat beside Devika, while Shashank and Raghu sat at the desk behind us. The class teacher walked in with a bunch of new students – three boys and a girl. She introduced them to the whole class and asked us to welcome them. As I looked at all of them, my eyes got stuck on the girl, Kintu.

She had fair skin, a freckled face, small eyes and a cute smile. Her hair was tied up in a single pony tail. I fell in love with her almost instantly. My heart began to jump when the teacher asked me to sit beside her. She didn’t speak to me until the recess. I passed a note to Devika saying
“I think I have fallen in love with her, you have to help me.”

So, as always, my knight in shining armour jumped to help me and broke the ice with Kintu. I froze and kept staring at her as Devika introduced us to each other. As the days passed, her cuteness began to grow on me so much that whenever I spoke to her I began to stammer. I would simply follow her all over the school and blindly obey her.

“Arjun baby I feel like eating a chocolate
,” and zwoop! A chocolate would come out of my pocket.

“You know baby, the school bus was so crowded in the evening that I hurt my knee yesterday,”
Kintu said.

That night I cried to my dad about how the bus was crowded and how
I
had hurt my knee. My poor dad sent his driver to drop me to school. I made sure I picked and dropped Kintu every day so that she never hurt her knee or anything else again.  

I knew that she had a crush on me, so I was itching to ask her out, but could never muster enough courage to tell her how I felt.

“I don’t know what happens to me when I’m around her. I forget what I have to say when I look at her,” I told Devika.

“It’s good that you can’t because she is using you.”

“Don’t say that, Dev. I think she loves me too.”

“Hah! Loves you!” she mocked.

Three years later, one day after fighting off Devika’s disapproval and the heebie-jeebies in my stomach, I finally asked Kintu out on Valentine’s Day. I borrowed some money from Radhika and the car and driver from dad and took her shopping. I bought her clothes, sandals, and accessories. I felt like a grown man buying stuff and carrying the bags for his wife. When she was finally satisfied with all the stuff she bought, I took her to her favourite restaurant. I had carried a note with me telling her how I feel about her just in case the words didn’t come out of my mouth. It never got used.

“I had so much fun today baby. I like being with you,” she stretched across the table and kissed my cheek.

“Wait I have to show you something,” she said and pulled out a leather wallet and handed it to me. “Do you like it?”

“This… this is awesome, I really like it... thank...” More than the wallet I liked the fact that she bought a gift for me.

“Really? Aww... you think he’ll like it?” she said holding my hand.

“He? Who?”

“Atul ya, my boyfriend? Oh... didn’t I tell you about him the other day?

“No, you didn’t!”

I never saw her after that day.

My last words to her echoed in my head as I saw her walk towards us. Nothing except her height had changed and that too because of the heels she wore.

“Hiee Arjie, where had my baby been for so long?” Kintu said and hugged me. “
Arjie? Since when did you start calling me that?”
a voice yelled inside me.

“Hhhh-Hi...” I stammered, I didn’t understand why. Hrida was a zillion times better looking and a better person than her. Perhaps it had something to do with my past with Kintu that turned me into the same fifteen-year-old-boy who lost all power of speech in front of her.

“Kintu, Hrida, Arjun’s girlfriend. Hrida, Kintu, my girlfriend,” Raghu said pulling out a chair for her.
His words kept ricocheting in my head.
“My girlfriend? How? When? Why?”
I gave Raghu one of our patented WTF looks and he winked at me.

“So you are the buyer of all the things she is wearing right now,” I tried to say to him telepathically.

But when I thought of it, I wasn’t really pissed at him. I was indifferent about Raghu dating Kintu. I was with Hrida, ‘The Hrida’ so I didn’t really care about Kintu, or any other girl for that matter.

“Ooooo...So Arjie finally found himself a girlfriend...” Kintu said poking her index finger into my stomach. “I never thought he’d ever have enough guts to propose to a girl.”

“You know, I’m sorry what’s your name?” Kintu said.

“Hrida!”  

“Oh ya, Hrida, you know this boy here spent three-and-a-half years following me like a puppy, but never told me that he loved me.”