Part-Time Devdaas... (21 page)

“I need a smoke, waiting in your tent, make it quick, don’t have much time.”
Raghu’s message read. I passed it to Shashank.

“Bloody pansy!” Shashank said grumpily.

“You coming?” I asked him as I got up to leave.

“Nah! I have a girlfriend too you know… can’t leave her alone,” he responded and I laughed.

Raghu almost jumped on me as I entered the tent.

“Light, light, light, fast,” he said agitatedly. “She doesn’t know I’m out.” I could totally understand his desperation. He had been holed up in his tent all day without a smoke.

“Where is she?” I asked clamping two cigarettes between my lips to light.

“Loo,” he said and snatched the half-lit cigarette.

“What if she comes out and doesn’t find you.”

“She won’t. She takes exactly eleven minutes to deep cleanse her face.”

“You timed it?? How many times has she been inside?”

“Nine, counting this one,” he said as he peacefully exhaled the smoke.

“Whaaaat?? Dude, is she crazy?”

“Works for me, as long as I get to fag. I dare not ask her about it. As it is she is mad at me over the bike ride.”

“She is still pissed about it?”

“Don’t ask.” He lite another cigarette, “Camping was a bad idea.”

“What did you do all day?”

“Nothing, watched her read a book, then heard her blast my balls out for bringing her on a bike and screwing her complexion. Then she started with the chronicles of her family which ended just a while back, so ya that’s about it.” The poor guy was clearly rotting inside his tent.

“Bring her out, we’ll have fun.
t
he night’s just beginning.”  

“Raghu!” Kanya screamed. Poor Raghu dropped his cigarette in fright and ran out of my tent.

After dinner that night, everyone except Raghu and his pricey Barbie had gathered around the campfire. I had always thought a person who can play a guitar always has the privilege of being the centre of attention. But when I started playing, I had everyone’s complete attention, except Hrida’s. Even my trademark songs failed to grab her complete attention. Reason? Rosco the dog. It had been more than six hours since our little trek uphill but Hrida was still glued to the dog. At one end there was Kanya who refused to let her boyfriend go away even for a couple of minutes, and then there was my girlfriend who was showering all her attention on a dog instead of her
lover
. My misery was that I couldn’t even kick or hit the mutt, it was a bloody
r
ottweiler; it would have shredded me like confetti.

“Get lost, you dog!” I said in a low voice to make sure I didn’t upset him much, and chucked the guitar before sitting besides Hrida. The dog gave me a stink eye and left in a huff.

“Rosco, come back!” Hrida whined as he left. “What did he do to you?” She almost grabbed me by my collar in anger, “Go say sorry to him.”

“What? Are you mad! I’m not appologising to a dog!!!” My human ego flooded my mind instantly at the thought of apologising to a mutt.

“Then I’m not talking to you,” she declared and turned away from me.

“You are kidding, right? There is no way I’m saying sorry to a dog.”

“Up to you. I’ve made myself clear.”

“You are being ridiculous now.”

“Why did you do it?”

“Because he was pissing me off.”

“By doing what?”

“Oh come on, he is just a dog.”

“Yes, that’s what he is. A dog and a very sweet one. You had no right to hurt him like that.” There was dead seriousness in Hrida’s voice. I learned a new thing about her that day. She loved dogs more than she loved me. “So until you go and say sorry to him, I’m not talking to you.” I saw Shashank and Neha in splits listening to our conversation.

“Oh what the hell, just go and get done with it,” a voice inside me said.

The mutt was having his dinner straight out of Brigadier’s plate, my ego crumbled piece by piece with every step I took towards him. And finally the historic moment that would be henceforth remembered by me as the ‘Sorry Dog Day’ came.

“Sorry Rosco, I didn’t mean to hurt you.” I felt like strangulating him when I said that. The dog didn’t even look at me.

“Happy?” I asked Hrida as I returned to sit beside her.

“Good boy,” she said and patted my head.

“Woof woof.”

“I’ll be your dream, I’ll be your wish, I’ll be your fantasy,

I’ll be your hope, I’ll be your love be everything that you need,

I’ll love you more with every breath truly madly deeply do,

I will be strong, I will be faithful ’cause I’m counting on a new beginning...
”

Hrida sang groggily while she randomly strummed open chords on my guitar. I gaped at the hypnotic visuals of her glowing face in the dim light of the kerosene lantern, her lips pouting and stiffing alternatively to sing, and her head cocking to the rhythm of the song.

“A reason for living, a deeper meaning,

I want to stand with you on a mountain,

I want to bathe with you in the sea,

I want to lay like this forever,

Until the sky falls down on me...”

Being a classic desi, pop music to me meant songs by Daler Mehendi, Baba Sehgal and Alisha Chinoi or Apache Indian, so I had no idea what she was singing. All that aside, Hrida singing a song for me had glued an ear-to-ear grin on my face.

“And when the stars are shining brightly in the velvet sky,

I’ll make wish send it to heaven then make you want to cry...”

The E-string of the guitar couldn’t handle Hrida’s aggressive strumming anymore and gave up its resistance and broke. She stopped singing and my smile gave way to a straight face. There was dead silence, all we could hear was a cricket chirping in the background. Both of us stared at each other for nice thirty seconds before our guffawing choke-slammed us on the bed. The laughing continued till our stomachs hurt and eyes watered uncontrollably. I extended my arm to tuck her hair behind her ear and ran my thumb below her eye to wipe the tear. She turned to me with a mild smile. I aimlessly brushed her eyebrow back and forth with my thumb. Then as if sensing my confusion, she smiled and blew a kiss at me. That I guessed was my cue. I gently pulled her towards me and hugged her. The intoxicating smell of her body shot my pulse. Going by her heavy breathing, I could tell that I too had the same effect on her. I loosened her from my hug to look at her. There was innocence in her eyes as she ran her fingers in my hair.

“Dog!” she said tightly clenching my hair.

“But I thought you loved dogs,” I semi whispered smiling at her.

“I do...” She said and pulled me towards her, “That
is
why you are here...” She whispered in my ear before biting it. I felt like a few cables up in my brain snapped and it had no control over the rest of the body anymore. I pumped a few deep breaths as I began to kiss her. I had no idea what I was up to. My hands felt the goose-bumps on her body so I assumed that even Hrida shared the same intensity. As I slid my hand inside her t-shirt, up her bare back, it struck me that it had been over two years that I was in relationship with Hrida but I had never gone beyond the first base. I didn’t feel the need or maybe I was waiting for the right moment, I had no idea. I pulled my hand out of the shirt and before my mind’s ethical authority took over, I peeled her tee off her body. It felt unfair that I was wearing a shirt when she lay topless in my arms, so with her in one arm, I tussled with my shirt and tossed it away. The lust wave struck me from head to toe as she bit my upper lip. I held her by her face and began to kiss her riotously. It wasn’t as if I had never kissed anyone else before, but the way Hrida made me feel, none of my previous experiences stood any chance. My mind went numb every time we kissed.

“You are gonna lose it today,” Voice Two merrily said, as our bodies began to rub violently against each other.

“I’m not sure,” Voice One said.

In spite of not being sure, my hand traveled all the way down to unbutton her denims while I continued kissing her.

“Stop!” She whispered gasping for breath as the button finally opened. I didn’t and went ahead and unzipped her denims.

“No!” she said and pushed me away.

I blankly stared at her as she got up and put on her clothes. I was still in a trance so it took me a while for Hrida’s reaction to sink in. She got off the bed and sat on the chair opposite it. I had no idea what I did wrong. A moment later I picked my shirt from the floor and wore it as I walked up to her.

“Hey...” I said going down on my knees to level with her line of sight. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing...” she said and from her shaking leg I could clearly tell she was restless and that made me uncomfortable.

She was obviously not alright, there was something wrong. In some corner of my mind, I knew I was the reason behind it.

“Buck up, you moron!” Voice One yelled.

“Hey... I’m sorry... I shouldn’t have...” I cut my sentence short as she cringed at my touch, which kind of offended me so I got up and leaned against the dresser beside her. I had a terrible itch to smoke a cigarette but I stubbed the urge and for the next eighteen minutes, I watched her shake her leg, crack her fingers, and occasionally nod her head as if she was having a conversation with herself. Then she heavily exhaled a breath and looked at me with a smile.

“I’m sorry I freaked out, I thought...” She stiffed her lips and cringed to suggest the obvious, “...it might seem utterly silly to you but...” she began to shake her leg again. The mere thought of losing her virginity had made Hrida horribly uncomfortable. “...in my mind I’m just not ready for it...” she said in a choked voice.

“Hey...” I went back on my knees as before, “Don’t worry, nothing happened and nothing will happen unless you want it to...” I said and skeptically took her hand in mine, “There is nothing more important to me than you. I can live without sex but not you.”

“Really, pig? For how long?” Voice Two screamed as soon as the last sentence came out of my mouth,

“You know I’d never do anything that would hurt you in any way, right?”

She vigorously nodded her head in a yes.

“Then trust me, blindly...” I said and she slid her fingers between mine. I took the piercing of her fingernails in the back of my palm as her agreement to blindly trusting me.

Even though I wasn’t the skirt-wearer, I knew what not being ready meant. Most of the girls I had met in the past had no qualms about having sex or losing their virginity, so back then it was me who was saving myself for the perfect one. Now when I was ready, life had flipped sides.

I
t being a fresh student intake season, LAX in Los Angeles was so crowded that it looked like Kurla station in Mumbai. But even in that crowd, it wasn’t easy to miss Viren, my six-feet-four-inches tall brother-in-law. Like a hawk he had spotted me the moment I stepped out of arrivals, and from that moment on, he waved at me excessively till I hugged him. It had been five years that he had been married to Radhika and like all typical married guys who get negligent about their physical appearance after scoring a hot wife, he too had ballooned up. So the guy who once had a body like Achilles now looked like giant version of Homer Simpson. It broke my heart to see him like that. I mean this guy was my idol of sorts. In spite of having no homosexual traces whatsoever, I had had a crush on him the day Radhika had introduced him to us. He had floppy hair, fair clean shaved face with a smile like Sean Connery’s, dark eyes, and a lean soccer player physique. What got me even more interested was his story of engineering which was the same as mine. The only difference was that he gave up on his dream of becoming a soccer player instead of engineering and got sucked into a corporate software firm in LA. Radhika would tell stories of his binging sprees but then I didn’t think it was so bad. In a forty-minute ride from the airport to Artesia, he stopped twice: once to buy cheese loaded hamburgers, though I have to confess they were ridiculously delicious, and once to refill his cola.

“Hey... no telling Didi about this alright?” he said as he parked the car in front of the house.

“I promise... I won’t tell her that you are cheating on her with a bagful of cheese burgers, but that stain of mayo on your shirt might.” I said pointing at his paunch.

“You bloody mayo... I’ll kill you,” he frantically began to wipe it off his shirt.

Radhika hugged me as soon as she opened the door. In nearly a year, no one had really hugged me and meant it. Besides, it had been quite a long time since I had seen her, so tears flooded my eyes, while she semi broke down hugging me tightly. In my anger, I had swiftly snapped ties with everyone who loved me, but what I failed to realise was that even I needed them as badly as they needed me. No matter how many new friends you make, their affection will never match up to the warmth of the people you grew up with. I had horribly missed Radhika in the past few months, especially after Devika left. I needed someone to complain to about my life. And now, after she was pregnant, I had all the more reasons to be with her. I was happy I chose to come to LA.

“You realise we are standing outside your house, right?” I said trying to lighten her mood. “These goras aren’t huge fans of melodrama.”

“I don’t care and I’ll kick them if anyone complains,” she giggled wiping her tears.

“You look great mamma!” I said holding her at an arm’s distance. “Glowing and all...” I kissed her. “But why is the baby bump so small? Isn’t it supposed to be very big in the sixth month?”

“Hah! My hubby makes up for the baby bump with his paunch.”

“Don’t worry baby, I won’t let anything happen to you...” I said to Hrida as I carried her on my back and ran wildly through the dark rain forest. I ignored the pain that the thorns on the forest floor inflicted on my feet. I felt a lump in my throat as I heard the growling of the wolves chasing me. I turned to looked at them and saw a pair of red blazing eyes fast approaching me. I tightened my grip on her arms and began to run faster, jumping over the rocks, dodging branches, fighting with the rain to keep my eyes open. The growling behind me sounded closer. I picked up a piece of rock and hurled it at the wolf but it was too late. Before the rock could do any harm, it pounced on me. I felt excruciating pain in my ribs as the red-eyed beast pushed his weight on me and brutally slammed me on the rocky ground. His bloodthirsty fangs got hold of Hrida’s feet and blood sprayed out of it.

“No!” I wailed in rage. I picked up a branch and stabbed the wolf again and again in his neck till every square inch of life bled out of him. I tore my shirt and wrapped it tightly around Hrida’s wound and began to run again.

“Just some more time baby, everything will be alright then,” I said to her.

“You don’t have to worry about anything, Arjun. I’ve taken care of it,” Devika said,

“Dev, where is Hrida?” I asked turning my head one eighty degrees to look at her.

“She is long gone, Poncho,” I saw Raghu saying it.

“Where is Hrida? What happened to her?” I asked.

“She is dead, She is dead, She is dead.”
m
ultiple voices hissed from the woods around me. The growling of the beasts was getting closer. I began to run fiercely holding tightly to the hands of the body I was carrying on my back. Then suddenly the body I was carrying began to stink offensively. Shivers ran through me as I realised I was carrying a human carcass. I dropped it on the ground and looked at it. It was Hrida. I stood there staring at her, feeling warmth of tears coming out of my eyes. Few minutes later, a couple of wolves with ‘break-up’ written all over their bodies surrounded me. While one of them dragged Hrida’s body into the dark woods, the others pounced on me and pinned me down on the rocky floor. The last thing I saw before I closed my eyes was the blood-stained pointed fangs of the beasts closing in on my face.

“Aaaaarrrrhhhhhh!” I cried out loud as I opened my eyes, my heart beating insanely, my eyes watering and body shaking in fear.

I was dreaming again! Shit!

I got out of the bed and followed the delicious aroma coming from the kitchen downstairs. 

“Babu, slept well?” Radhika said as I nuzzled on the back of her shoulder.

“Ummm.” It felt so good to be around someone who shared the same blood line. I closed my eyes and rested my forehead on her shoulder.

“You want some coffee?” Radhika asked stroking my head.

“Haan!” I said and sauntered to the dinner table. “Where’s Viren bhai?”

“Gym... should be back in a while,” she said looking at the wall clock. “Poncho?”

“Ya?”

“Why didn’t you tell Aai-Baba that you were coming here?”

My ego had clogged my mind so I didn’t, I thought of saying. Instead I kept quiet.

“I hope you know you are turning out into a complete prick.”

“Ya I have been telling that to myself for a while now,” I murmured. She turned and looked at me with the stare she’d inherited from our mother.

“You keep you smart assery to yourself.”

“Didi, I don’t want to fight.”

“You better not dare...” she said pointing the ladle at me, the chicken gravy dribbling from it. “I am not Mom, I’ll thrash you left, right, and centre, understand?” her voice gave up her fake anger.

“Aye aye, captain,” I said and jutted my tongue out to tease her but she had turned and got back to stirring the chicken.

“So... how’s Shashank’s bride?” she asked as she handed me a mug of coffee.

“Bride?”

“You know Shashank’s getting married, right?”

A wave of rage and hurt swept me as I replayed her question in my mind.

“What the fuck, Sachdev’s getting married? He didn’t think it was important to tell me.” Voice One said.

“Why do you care anyway?” Voice Two said.

“Ya exactly. To hell with him man, you don’t need him anymore,” Voice Three said.

“Poncho?” Radhika yelled. I stared at her blankly. “Don’t tell me you fought with him too?”

I continued staring.

“Raghu? Him too?” I coyly shrugged. Radhika had a killer knack of sensing things out of me, so I prayed she wouldn’t ask me about Devika next. I was too ashamed of what I had done. And if she found out what I did to her, she would slay me with the ladle.

“What’s gotten into you, Arjun?”

“I wish I knew.”

“And what happened with Hrida?”

“Di, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Why?”

“Why?
w
hy, because I still love her, why because even after all this while it still hurts, why because I ran away from India to get away from all that pain and commotion inside me, why because I don’t want to relive everything that went worng. That is why.”

Radhika stared at me as I snapped back.

“Muffin! Is the dinner ready? I’m famished!” Viren said as he opened the door.

Thank god for Viren, he saved me from another fight.

The only exhausting part of my daily routine in LA was the one hour fifteen minutes of travelling from Radhika’s house to college. Even though Viren would drop me most of the time, the peak hour traffic in LA would squeeze the patience out of me. But the irritation was nothing against the contentment that spurted through me while calling shots on the monitor. The moment since I set foot on campus of Los Angeles Film Academy six months back, life had turned into a total roller coaster ride. Situated in the heart of universal studios, the school to me felt like the Mecca of film making. I was finally happy. From the huge make believe sets to beautiful actors portraying larger than life characters, nothing about the place was real. Yet it inspired billions of people all over the world to dream. I had always thought film sets were intensely honest places which never hid the reality behind pseudo pictures they created on celluloid. What I liked about film making was that the director could play god to the characters and make them do whatever he wished, without any intervention from the real god upstairs. First semester in school zwooped making films, playing crew on films, acting, directing, and producing. There was so much buzz around me for the past six months that all the hurt I brought with me from my motherland got anaesthetised.

“Poncho!” Radhika called me as I was about to leave for college. “Shashank called twice, he said he couldn’t reach you. He’s left his number… call him.”

“OK, I’ll do it in the day.”

“Why haven’t you combed your hair?”

“Bye Didi
,
see you in the evening.” I kissed her and rushed out of the house.

December 16 was his wedding day, and no matter how emotionally colourblind I had gotten, I couldn’t digest the fact that I was going to miss Shashank’s wedding. I wondered how I ended up in such a morbid place in life. I had been quite successful in the past six months in earning some sanity for my mind and I wasn’t willing to flush it.
s
o before the visuals of all those years of loafing around with him and Raghu opened the door behind which I had locked all the rancid memories, I plugged the earphones and let the chaos of electronic music take over.