Part-Time Devdaas... (17 page)

I grabbed the cigarette box and timidly began to walk up the stairs to the roof.

“At last you are alone. I thought you’d never leave,” Voice Two said.

“Stop bothering me,” Voice One said.

“Thank goodness,” I said under my breath when I saw Smiley on the roof.

“Hey!” I said, startling her. The pouch in her hand dropped on the floor.

“Shit, I didn’t bolt the door?” she said hurriedly collecting the contents of the pouch.

“Were you just rolling up a joint in the house?” I borrowed Radhika’s scandalised tone.

“You are smart,” she mocked.

“How old are you? Thirteen? Fourteen?”

“And, you are funny too!”

“What else do you do?”

“Pretty much all the things that a seventeen-year-old girl isn’t expected to do,” she winked and clamped the joint with her lips and pulled in a long drag.

“Come on now, stop being such a chacha. Pull one.”

“No, I’m fine,” I cringed.

“Wait a minute, you’ve never gotten stoned before, have you?” she almost condescended.

“Well, not exactly, but I’ve felt the buzz passively,” I said quietly as her face began to light up to laugh. She laughed at me for the next three minutes… non-stop.

“I-I’m sorry but that was incredibly funny,” she continued laughing.

“You want to try one?” she offered. I shrugged.

The first three drags felt like a normal cigarette, but when it began to kick in, my face went numb, throat dried, lips stretched and my body went into slow motion. I paused significantly after every word I spoke. Everything around started appearing in the sets of three. A few puffs had craned the huge load off my chest and it felt feather-light. My mind was experiencing the blissful silence it had craved for, like centuries.

“This… is… so… awesome,” I said.

“I knowww!” she paused, and stared straight into my eyes.

“Come, let’s go up there,” she said extending her hand. I held one of the three cold hands I was seeing and let her guide me up the ladder to the water tank. Both of us rested our backs on the tank and gazed at the sky, still holding hands.

“I wish it would always feel like this – weightless, boundless, painless,” I heard her breathe heavily.

“Hmm.” I let her hand go and ran my fingers through my hair and pulled them.

“Tell me something.” She sat up folding her legs. “If you were a girl, a hot one, who never deprives her boyfriend of anything, yet ‘the dog’ strays around just for a kick,” she said counting the conditions on her fingers, “What would you do?”

“Ah, umm, that’s heavy.” 

“And you love him so much that you can’t leave him…”

“Hmm.” I closed my eyes.

“What?
t
ell me now.”

“I’m thinking.”

“Bugger! Give me your arm.” I did and she rested her head on it.

“Are
you
in the situation we are talking about here?”

“Yuck! No!”

“Good, because it’s too much to think about,” I said as she began to laugh.

“Arjun!”

“Hmm.”

“I wanna kiss you,” she said. I turned my head to her to find her face uncomfortably close to mine.

“Can I?” She asked after I stared at her for don’t know how long.

“I don’t know,” I said looking at her lips, thinking if I should.

“No, no.” I said, last
no
a little louder more of telling myself than her.

“Why? Do you have a girlfriend or something?”

“Yes, I mean no. I just haven’t officially broken up with her yet,” I said.

“So this is how it feels, when you don’t officially break up!” Voice One said.

“Smiley said what?” Raghu screamed, when I told him about Smiley wanting to kiss me.

“Let me get this straight,
Smiley
said she wanted to kiss
you
and you said
no
? Right?”

“Ya, right.”

“Because?” He stared at me, “You thought it wasn’t right since you hadn’t officially broken up with Hrida?”
h
e said himself when I didn’t reply.

“Yes.”

“Can I please slap you?” He waited for an answer.

“Get lost, Raghuvir.” Shashank pushed him away. “You did right, kiddo.”

“What is wrong with you guys?” Raghu sounded like a disheartened kid in the toy store whose parents refused to buy him toys. “Refusing to have sex and be a touch-me-not is a girl’s job not ours.”

“She didn’t want to have sex,” I said.

“I know genius, I’m just saying.”

“Yes Mr. Randy, but when you are in a relationship, it doesn’t feel right to stray,” Shashank said.

“Oh come on, don’t patronise me. I’ve dated girls too
and
strayed at the same time. It’s normal.”

“You have dated girls, but you’ve never been in a relationship with anyone.”

“And you guys think there is a difference between the two.” Raghu said. Both of us shrugged and he began to laugh. “You guys are panties, pure silk panties. I better leave before I throw up.” He left laughing.

Both of us began to laugh.

“It’s 5.30, let’s go pick the girls,” Shashank said stubbing his cigarette.

“I don’t want to meet anyone.”

“By anyone you mean Hrida.”

“Yes.” I lit a cigarette.

“Poncho, you’ve got to give her a chance to explain.”

“There is nothing to explain, Shashank. You too saw what happened that day.”

“There is, trust me.”

In the fifteen minutes that it took from the naka to Hrida’s college, I thought of all sorts of venomous words to spew on Hrida to vent my anger. But a cigarette and an Aarey lassi later when I saw her walk out of the college gate, my heart began to jump in the rib cage and the rush of the blood evaporated the loathsome feelings inside me. My feet went cold as she came close.

“Hi,” she said to me and smiled. I turned to Neha without responding.

“When did you guys come back?” Neha asked slapping my hand.

“Yesterday,” I tried to sound as bland as I could.

“OK. What’s the plan now?”

“Nothing, let’s meet at the café,” Shashank said to me.

Neha hopped onto his bike and he zoomed away. Hrida stood there looking at me. I kicked the bike to start, and waited. My ego had clogged the words in my throat, so as a gesture of asking her to sit I looked at her. She hopped on the bike. I looked at her face in the mirror. What’s worse than the agony of being in love is the pain that accompanies as a consolation price which is always ready to suck you in. And then follows the generation of countless contrasting emotions that leave your innards in total chaos. One part of me was dying to look at her, hold her, talk to her; while there arose an anguish out of the memories of the past in another. I hated every bit of Hrida for what she had done to me. I however wished all my hatred could somehow disappear and life reset itself to normalcy.

“How have you been?” she asked with a lovelorn look in her eyes, but I chose to glue my eyes on the road.

“I tried calling you a thousand times, you know, but couldn’t reach you so messaged you. Didn’t you get them?”

I had read each and every one of the hundred and thirty-eight messages she had sent more than once, most of them saying sorry and begging me to respond.

“I was worried. You should have at least told me before you left. I missed you baby,” she said and pecked a kiss on my shoulder and I cringed to show my resentment. A wave of sadistic pleasure swept through me seeing her face flush the smile, she gave up looking at me. Though my rudeness was beginning to annoy me, my ego refused to give up.

“How long won’t you be talking to me?” She stared at me through the mirror.

“Would saying
neve
r do the trick for you?” Her tone irked me so I snapped back.

“I have been saying sorry for almost a month now. What more do you expect out of me? And for no fault of mine.”

“Classic! So you’ve already decided it wasn’t your fault.”

“Well since you haven’t given me a chance to explain, I had to.”

“Oh yes, the explanation. I am so sorry to have ceased you from doing it for so long. Please enlighten me.” I geared down and pulled the throttle in anger. Now I stared at her while she huffed away.

“I said sorry, so please get on with your explanation, let’s just end this disaster today itself. I don’t want to see you again.”

She looked at me jarred. “When I said I’m meeting my school friends, I didn’t lie. I did meet them. I didn’t know Abhimanyu would also be there with everybody else. He had been constantly pushing me to meet; when I didn’t heed, he got Tanya to get me to meet him. So we weren’t alone that evening, nor was I cooing with him. It was my bad luck that everybody just left before you came. I could have left with everybody else but this guy has been an asshole and I simply couldn’t leave without settling my score with him. He means nothing to me. What happened in the past is the past. No matter how much he implores, what he wants is never happening. I love you Arjun and you know that. I can’t  keep assuring it to you all the time. If you don’t want me, I’ll leave....” the rest of the words that came out of her mouth got silenced by a huge thud.

The state transport bus driver had made his trademark we-own-the-roads erratic turn and the rear bumper of the bus clasped my mirror and dragged the bike along with us for a nice ten feet before the bike slumped on the road. Right from the moment that douche made the turn, to the moment where I felt the heavy weight of my bike falling on my leg, I saw everything in slow motion. It took me a couple of seconds to regain my senses. I got up in a fit of rage and limping, ran behind the bus hurling abuses. Halfway through I stopped and turned to look at Hrida. I saw a crowd surrounding my bike.
Shit
. When I returned to the spot, Hrida was lying on the road motionless. My heart sank in horror.

“Hey Hrida… Hrida…” I said trying to wake her up, I had never been so scared in my life, I helplessly looked around at the staring faces in the crowd. “Oye, get up, please, Hrida!” I said trying again. The ten whole seconds that she took to open her eyes were the longest ten seconds of my life. I took multiple deep breaths, while my body perspired to cool itself. I walked her to the footpath and sat her down. Someone from the crowd brought my battered bike. A few people had caught the driver and pulled him down from the bus for a handsome thrashing. The traffic constables patiently waited for the crowd to vent their frustration. Suddenly Hrida began to laugh at the whole scene.

“You should have seen your face,” she said trying to get over her hilarity.

“I almost shat in my pants.” I could still feel thumping of my heart.  

“Eww… gross!”

“Are you alright?” I asked. She nodded a yes, “Bloody asshole ruined my bike.
Maar bhenchod
k
o!
I yelled looking at the crowd and sat beside her.

“So, can we get done with the break-up you wanted or have you changed your mind?”