When Only Love Remains (5 page)

‘Take care,’ says Arundhati.

Tears streak down his cheek and he can’t bring himself to let go of Arundhati’s hand. Arundhati jerks it out of his grip.

‘Do you love him?’ asks Devrat

‘I will learn to love him.’

‘That’s just shit, Arundhati.’

‘It’s all I have,’ says Arundhati.

‘Don’t you love me even a little bit now?’

‘I will not answer that. And even if I did, it would never work out between us. You will always be a child, Devrat, stuck in your world of fears and insecurities, always wanting someone to hang on to. I loved you but I’m not that nice.’

Arundhati walks away. He watches her exit the gate, hug her fiancé, the man she will learn to love, and he drives away with her. Of course she was happier with me, she will seek me out again, she will realize I’m the one she needs to be with and that I’m the one she is in love with, Devrat tells himself and closes his eyes.

Avanti sits in the cab and thanks God it’s over. The three weeks of training where they learned everything about safety, service and first aid, were very strenuous. Getting up at six-thirty in the morning, dressing up in the blue and red uniform of the airlines, tying her hair up, putting on make-up, strutting unsurely on her heels, and looking for an auto was tough. By the time she reached the office, she had to do her hair and the make-up again. The day wouldn’t end by ten in the night.

It was only by eleven she would return at night. Her father would be awake but there was no conversation at the dinner table. One day she had walked in early from work and had seen her father cooking and she thought it was adorable but she didn’t know what to say to him. He’s still practically a stranger to her. The irony was Avanti spent days at aviation training learning to talk to people, a skill at which she was already great and only improving, but at home she had no idea how to broach a conversation with her father. Should she be angry? Should she tell him that it’s okay? Should she tell him that, frankly, nothing matters? She’s clueless about how to go about this. So she just shuts up every day when they are sitting at the table next to each other eating their breakfasts and dinners. There’s one thing though that she loves. It’s her father’s tea. It’s always perfect and she’s kind of getting addicted to it. She never told her father that but it’s kind of the only thing she looked forward to those days when chaos had taken over his life.

The instructors who took the lessons were ruthless and unforgiving. They were also wrinkled and old. Misses in the lipstick and the hair department were looked upon as cardinal sins, a creased uniform was like killing a puppy, and turning up late in the class was intolerable. But she’s glad it’s over.

It’s her first flight and she’s still stuck in traffic.

Even at seven in the morning, the circuitous roads of Gurgaon are choking with bumper to bumper traffic. The newer, wider roads have helped but every second seven more kids are born in India. One of them dies instantly, three of them never see a school in their lives and ply rickshaws, two of them end up in the lower rungs of the society and drive scooters, and the rest buy cars. Big cars. Sometimes SUVs. The traffic grows every day. Unless people find a way to teleport, this city is going to burst.

She’s flipping through her roster for the month while in the car. It has a Kolkata flight later this month and she’s most kicked about it. Devrat had replied to all the twenty mails a few days back. What she really liked about those replies was that they weren’t standard. He wasn’t copying and pasting the same answers. He was typing the answers out, and even though he was answering to people who didn’t exist, it felt like he was talking to her, the way it has always been. That reminds her that she hasn’t checked Devrat’s profile in over two weeks; her training had been really strenuous.

The car stops at a red light. She has just logged into her account with her head on the glass window of the car when she hears a loud honking. She takes notice. And the other flight attendants who are in the car with her wake up with a start.

Avanti looks to her side and it’s Shekhar in a two-door car shouting at the cab driver. The red light turns to green and Shekhar’s car screeches to a halt in front of their cab. The driver of the cab walks out to confront Shekhar, but Shekhar pushes him to the ground. ‘
Neeche rahiyo, bhenchod
(Stay down, sisterfucker).’

Scared, Avanti walks out. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Where the fuck were you? Why isn’t your number working?’ He’s shouting at Avanti as he snatches her handbag. Avanti’s trying to stop him, her eyes have welled up. It feels like she’s still in a relationship with him. Back in those days, the minute Shekhar used to start shouting, she used to think she must have done something wrong. Even now, she’s wondering what she might have done wrong.

She’s looking at the flight attendants who were sitting in the car but are now out as well and ready to stand by Avanti. And then she’s looking at Shekhar, who’s rummaging through her handbag to find the phone. He finds it and dials his number. ‘Oh! So now you have taken a new phone. Who gave you this number? WHO? YOUR NEW BOYFRIEND?’

‘Shekhar! Stop it! I’m getting late.’ She’s hitting Shekhar on his arm but he’s not budging. He’s into the recent calls list and luckily, he finds nothing. ‘Stop it!’ She has almost broken down into tears but Shekhar doesn’t even give her a second look.

‘Who are you?’ the two other flight attendants are shouting at Shekhar. They are about to call for help, but Avanti waves them down.

Shekhar throws the bag and the phone on the ground. ‘You better pick up my calls. And if I get to know that you’re dating anyone, I swear I will kill you. I know you have deleted his number now, but I will catch you soon enough.’

He gets in his car and whizzes off.

‘I’m sorry about that,’ Avanti apologizes, a little ashamed, still shaking from the ordeal.

The two flight attendants behave like they didn’t just see what happened. Avanti sits in the car, wipes her tears and does her make-up again. The flight attendant sitting next to her whispers in her ear, ‘Never take shit from boyfriends.’ Avanti nods. She doesn’t know why she takes it from him. She never really even loved him. And right now, even though she’s crying a little, she’s furious and she can kill someone.

She puts the battery in the cell phone again and checks if it’s working. She stuffs her earphones in and increases the volume on her favourite playlist. She opens her roster again. There are three layovers, at Kochi, Mumbai and Kolkata. A brief smile comes on her face when she reads ‘Kolkata’. Layovers are when you fly to the destination city and come back after a day or two. All she wants is to see Devrat play and sing in front of her eyes, maybe shake his hand, and hug him endlessly. The very thought of it makes her so happy. She’s finally going to meet her little puppy, her saviour. And just like that, what happened minutes ago is history. ‘Thank you,’ she mutters.

‘Are you okay?’ asks the flight attendant sitting next to her, seeing the sudden change of mood in Avanti, who’s smiling widely now. ‘Weren’t you just crying a moment ago?’

‘I’m okay, now.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. I’m sorry for that. That guy is slightly deranged.’

‘Go the police, then,’ says the girl.

‘Some day,’ says Avanti.

‘Was he your boyfriend?’ asks the girl.

‘No, he was an ex-boyfriend. My boyfriend is in Kolkata,’ chuckles Avanti. ‘His name is Devrat.’ Avanti realizes anyone would think that she, not Shekhar, is deranged, but that’s okay. She rightly compares Devrat to a little puppy. No matter how angry or depressed or suicidal you are, you look at a picture of cute puppies and everything is fine and fuzzy. Devrat’s Avanti’s puppy.

Still stuck in the jam, she logs into her accounts.
What?
She immediately starts to curse herself over and over again.
Damn. Damn. Damn. This is not happening!
There are seven updates, tens of new pictures, and new videos on his page. There are people, girls, who claim to be the biggest fans of his music. There are over a hundred likes on some of his pictures, girls gushing over his music and how gorgeous he looks, and she can’t help but feel envious.

There are a few sound clips uploaded on Soundcloud and she downloads them on her phone. She doesn’t enjoy the music; she is too angry to think about anything else. Devrat was
her
discovery. She was the one who was amongst the first ten people to like his page, to like his music, to share his lyrics and the grainy videos of his performance on her Facebook profile. How can other girls claim him as theirs? She decides not to share or like anything. The two new songs,
Ridiculous Smoke
and
Perfect Futures
, play on a never-ending loop on her phone. She likes all his pictures. ‘I hate this! Why is this guy getting popular! Not fair!’

The taxi parks close to the airport and she jumps out. Focus, Avanti tells herself, and tries not to think of Devrat’s new-found popularity.

The other two amble out, still nonchalant, their faces expressionless, their chins held up high, sunglasses perched on their foreheads, as if they do this every day. As they walk in to the newly constructed Terminal 3 of the Delhi Indira Gandhi Airport, she notices uncountable pairs of eyes on them and she shrugs her shoulders and walks in.

‘Papers.’ She is broken out of her reverie by the moustachioed guard, who is standing upright with his right hand outstretched in front of him.

The other two show him their IDs and stride in, their chins still facing the ceiling. She fumbles, looks for her ID in pockets in her handbag, and finally finds it hanging around her neck. The guard smiles and lets her in. She smiles back.

‘
Pehla din hai?
First day?’ the guard asks.

‘Yes,’ she says, ‘
Aapka
? Yours?’ And they both laugh. ‘I will see a lot of your moustache from now on . . .’ Avanti looks at the guard’s badge and the guard answers, ‘Kareem.’

‘Okay, Kareem bhai. Wish me luck.’ The guard smiles widely and wishes Avanti luck.

With the trolley wheeling behind her, she tries to catch up pace with the other two who are still walking with unmatched confidence and look like they know where they have to go. Their IDs are checked again and then their small suitcases. Her luggage has lipstick, a manual and a spare set of uniform just in case. She upholds the image of a quintessential flight attendant: a twenty-something girl in a well-fitted uniform, walking in high heels with a colour-coordinated trolley behind her.

They are ushered into the lounge where all the flight attendants, flying all across the breadth and length of the country and beyond, are waiting for their call outs. The room is uncharacteristically silent and most of the girls are sleeping. Some of them are tapping on their BlackBerries and flicking on their iPads or doing their hair. She lies down on a couch, surprisingly soft and inviting, and listens to the songs again and they are awesome, notwithstanding her hatred for other girls who have started liking Devrat as well. So unfair!

Girls keep exiting the room and are replaced by more girls. There is no conversation.

‘Is it your first time?’ asks Avanti to a girl who’s clearly a veteran.

The girl frowns for she, too, was trying to sleep. ‘No.’

‘It’s my first time.’

‘Hmmm.’

‘Any tips?’

‘Be disciplined.’

‘Anything more? Oh, by the way I love your hair,’ says Avanti and it’s a genuine compliment.

‘It’s the same as everyone else’s,’ says the girl and closes her eyes. Avanti shuts up.

After an hour, names are called out for her flight and a big smile bursts out on her face. Four girls get up and head for the exit. Two of them use the mirror briefly to reign in their stray strands of hair into the buns and join the others.

‘First flight?’ the most senior-looking of the flight attendants asks Avanti as she nervously follows the lead of the other three flight attendants. They enter the flight and go through the preliminary checks they are supposed to carry out regardless of how stupid or superfluous they might seem. A little later, the first batch of passengers walks past them. The next half an hour passes by in greetings. ‘Good morning.’ ‘Welcome.’ ‘Indiago Airlines welcomes you.’ ‘Thank you for flying with us.’

Avanti’s in the alley waiting for passengers and although she’s just supposed to smile at them and welcome them, she finds herself in long conversations with a lot of them. She’s flitting between Hindi, English, Bengali and the bits of Punjabi she had learnt from her friends back at school.

Avanti’s jaws hurt by the time the last few of the business class passengers pass her by, but she’s so glad she finally has someone (actually three hundred people) to talk to. That one hour in the lounge staying shut was just annoying.

Avanti is in the economy class and she would eventually, if she sticks around, graduate to working in the business class, but she’s not looking forward to dealing with business and first class passengers. They have the most calm and relaxed faces of them all as they walk past, smelling as if fresh out of a scented shower. Rich housewives, upper-rung business executives on company money, spoilt kids, and TV models. Good-looking people. The business class cabin reeks of money and she doesn’t like the way they look at her. It’s with the face of a customer, someone who’s bought something. Or someone.

She moves on. The economy class is bustling with activity as passengers try to fit their hand baggage, clearly twice the size allowed, into the overhead bins. Had it been a train, expletives would have been exchanged and bags would have tumbled out and hands would have risen. Here, grumbles would have to do. She reaches out and helps a few people manage their hand baggage and find their seats. The bags are heavy, Avanti realizes. And why are big, burly men taking her help in stuffing bags in overhead bins? It’s not as if flight attendants are diploma holders on ‘How to Stuff Luggage in Overhead Bins.’ But she helps them anyway and incorrigibly, finds herself in a conversation about which schools their children go to. ‘Shut up, Avanti,’ she tells herself.