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Off the charts

It’s becoming embarrassing now. I can’t take my eyes off my own girlfriend, the girl I’ve been dating for five years. My jaw had dropped the moment I’d seen her walk out of the hotel door and I have not returned to normal yet. I thank Shrey for it. Avantika and I have been driving for the past six hours and it is the best drive ever. She has mastered the art of seduction. Though, I should add here that my threshold is shamefully low. At times I have gotten seduced seeing her brush her teeth.

But today is off-the-charts awesome. Avantika has been slipping her hands in ... everywhere! I liked her anyway but I like the new her more. But it’s bothering me. She does not have to pretend in front of me. That’s not what people in love do, right?

‘You really don’t have to do this. I think you’re still fun and awesome.’ ‘Why do you think I’m doing this for you?’ she says and looks at me.

‘I don’t know. I mean, Shrey said those things and you—’

‘I am doing this for myself,’ she says. ‘Shrey was right. I have grown up.

I shouldn’t have. I have been the sane, mature person in our relationship. Maybe it’s time to switch places. I will be the stupid, irresponsible one now.’

She winks at me. Her winks are like the lull before the storm. Sometimes it means let’s-go-home, other times it means you-are-so-owned ... and so on. I wonder what it means this time. I have to admit that I’m a little scared. I have seen the ‘Tiya part’ of Avantika and it’s infinite times crazier than anything Tiya does. I don’t think I can keep up with that now.

 Slowly the sun turns orange and sets across the horizon. We have taken a million detours and I’m still not confident that we are on the right track. The maps are all awry and the people around are as clueless as we are. But they still try to help us by giving us wrong directions. Silly helpful people.

A little later, we find ourselves on a long road that doesn’t seem to have an end and our car is the only one for miles around. Shrey scar can give way anytime and I’m sweating just thinking about it. I look at Avantika and her eyes are closed. She is least bothered that there is absolutely nothing in sight. No motel. No dhaba even.

‘Do we drive through the night?’ I ask.

‘Why not? I can drive if you feel tired,’ she says and looks at me. She really isn’t concerned.

‘Are you serious?’

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Anyway, there’s nothing in sight. We don’t have an option.’

Contrary to what I’d expected and hoped for, she doesn’t panic. Instead, she asks me to switch and takes over the driving wheel. She puts on her iPod earphones and starts to drive along.

Soon, the only light in the pitch-black night are the headlights and the stars above, and the only sound is the rumble of the car’s engine. The darkness around us is a little disturbing. Try driving on a deserted road with the car’s headlights off. I can bet it’s the most uneasy you would ever feel. We are all used to the light around us; darkness unsettles us.

Avantika, I am sure, is not thinking about it. I look at her and she is bobbing her head to the music on her iPod. Soon, I am asleep.

I wake up with a start. I look groggily all around and notice that Avantika is still driving.

‘Finally!’ she says.

‘What time is it?’ I ask.

‘Five.’

‘Five? And you have been driving?’

‘Yes,’ she says and smiles. She has driven through the night. Six hours. ‘Six hours?’

‘Yes.’

I ask her to stop the car and she does. We brush our teeth and wash our

faces with a few bottles of mineral water we had picked up on the way. I

 take over the driver’s seat.

The sun is slowly coming out and there are some trucks at a distance. My

neck hurts for I had slept awkwardly. Avantika, on the other hand, behaves like it’s just another day. Even though she hasn’t slept the entire night, and her hair is a mess, she looks amazing. Those svelte legs and her perfectly sculpted body is just what you want to see early in the morning. The warm morning sun pales in comparison. She leans back on her seat.

It’s only been fifteen minutes when I see the diary on the dashboard with the bookmarks inside it. It’s so distracting. At certain levels, it takes me back to my college life. The screwed-up life and times of the dead guy bring back some strange memories. I drive on.

Avantika has dozed off and my mind wanders to the times I’ve spent with her. I see many couples around and I don’t know how much they love each other, but I know for sure that our love is way better. She completes me. No matter where I go, what I do, she is always on my mind. Anything I do or strive for is meaningless if I don’t have Avantika by my side. Cheesy as it may sound, life without her is meaningless.

I know I’m not the best-looking or the smartest guy Avantika can get, but one thing I know for sure, she won’t ever get someone who loves her more than I do.

Three hours more of driving through empty, wide roads brings us to Bhopal. The city is still sleeping when we get there. We cross a few mosques, a huge lake and a couple of parks. But I know we wouldn’t be doing much of sightseeing on this trip.

I stop outside a small hotel, ask the receptionist for the rates, negotiate a little and finalize it. Avantika is still fast asleep. I pick her up in my arms and carry her to the hotel room. Apart from the fact that I just love watching her sleep, I think carrying her in my arms is an incredibly romantic thing to do. I am sure it’s something she will brag about to her girlfriends.

I tuck her inside the blanket and lie down right next to her. Almost immediately, I fall asleep. It’s nearly noon when I wake up. Avantika is already up and around. She has a cup of coffee in her hand. She is looking out of the window and looks enchanting.

‘When did you wake up?’ I ask her.

She looks at me lovingly, comes near me and sits on my lap. ‘It’s been a couple of hours.’

‘Why didn’t you wake me up?’

 ‘You look cute when you’re sleeping,’ she says.

Aha! That’s exactly what I think about her.

‘Thank you.’ I blush. It’s been years but still I turn into a red tomato

every time she says something nice about me. ‘Aww! Look at you.’

‘What?’ I say.

‘You’re blushing, Deb.’

‘No, I’m not. I am a guy. I don’t blush.’

‘Achha? I thought it was cute. Anyway, if you say you weren’t blushing ...’

‘No! I was.’

We both laugh aloud.

‘Oye, I was waiting for you to get up. Let’s go meet him. I can’t wait,’

she says and I nod. I can see the diary in her hand. Obviously she’s been reading it again. Suddenly her face droops and she looks away.

‘What?’

‘We need to meet Nivedita too,’ she says. I nod again.

I can see that Avantika is more curious than I am about meeting Piyush. We stand outside the office Piyush works in, holding his business card. We are about to know the name of the guy whose initials are etched on the diary. Needless to say, I am freaking excited.

It’s a smallish office, and I see the designation—‘Design Engineer’—on the card. I hope he isn’t busy and gives us time. After all, we have some bad news to give him. His best friend from school is dead. That’s got to mean something, right?

I follow Avantika into the premises. She always takes the initiative for all the things that require extreme confidence and I usually just hide behind her.

‘Hi, I want to meet Mr Piyush Makhija,’ she says. ‘I’ve come from his hometown. His father sent us.’

The receptionist looks up at Avantika, dials Piyush’s extension number, and lets him know. She asks us to wait in the adjacent room. I wonder if Avantika is thinking what I am thinking—what will we say to him?

A little later, a guy dressed in a crisp, white shirt and a well-ironed pair of trousers walks into the room. He has a slight paunch, but his bright, fair face distracts me from it. He looks intelligent and hard-working in his

 rimless spectacles and cropped hair. So, this is what hot guys from school grow up to be?

I don’t know, because as a kid, I was the fat, ugly one, who used to be ridiculed all the time. I was a favourite for all the bullies in school, and used to spend days crying on the last bench.

He gives us a confused look but puts his hand forward.

‘Hi, I’m Avantika,’ she shakes his hand. ‘And this is Deb.’

‘Where are you from?’ he asks. He looks confused.

‘Your dad gave us your number and address,’ Avantika says. ‘Actually,

we wanted to know something from you.’ ‘Yes?’

‘We found a diary,’ she says and pauses dramatically. ‘It’s of a friend of yours from school. We wanted to know something about him.’

‘Diary? I don’t get it,’ he says. The look on his face tells us that he thinks we’re two crazy people.

‘Did you hear about the Chandni Chowk blast?’

‘Oh yes, I did. What about it?’

‘A friend of yours died in the blast. Deb survived and found this diary.’ ‘My friend? Who? I don’t—’

She hands over the diary to him. He looks at the diary looks at us, and

then flips over to the first page. He runs his hand over the initials and doesn’t look up. He has recognized the initials and the person to whom this diary belonged. He flips through the pages and his eyes tear up. He keeps turning the pages over without reading, and feels the burnt edges of the pages. We hear him sigh. The death of a best friend can take some time to sink in. After quite a while, with tears in his eyes, he looks up and says, ‘Are you sure?’ We nod.

‘Can you tell us his name?’ Avantika asks.

‘Ritam Dey,’ he says softly.

RD.

He pauses for a little while and asks how we got to him and we tell him

everything. We show him the sentence in the diary that led us to him. He hands the diary back to us. We look at him with expectant eyes, hoping he could lead us to Ragini or Nivedita.

‘Don’t you want to read it?’ Avantika asks.

‘Had he wanted me to read it, he would’ve told me. And we didn’t end on a good note. So, I should probably not be reading this.’

 ‘What can you tell us about him?’ I ask.

He starts, ‘We first met at the boarding school right after that incident with the guys ...’

He continues and tells us that Ritam was from Mumbai and that’s where he lived before coming to the boarding school. Piyush tells us that Ritam was an aggressive football player and that’s why he was drawn to him. Together, they made the most lethal forward attack that Dehradun school football had ever witnessed.

‘We made a great team on the football field. In the three years in which we played together, I don’t think we lost a single match. We were unbeatable. I can’t believe he’s dead ...’ His voice trails off.

‘We are sorry,’ Avantika says.

‘He was a nice guy.’

He tells us more about how they first met, grew and bonded as friends.

Piyush’s voice trails off in the middle a few times as the news of the death of his best buddy from school sinks in slowly. He is in tears. I know how he feels. When I first saw Piyush, I had replaced his face with mine and imagined Shrey being dead. My heart shrank to the size of a peanut and I could barely keep my tears in. Yeah, I’m sensitive. Just that I don’t cry during movies.

‘He really missed you,’ Avantika says.

‘It’s in the diary,’ I say. ‘He thought you ignored him.’

‘Why would I?’ Piyush asks.

‘You were popular, a better player, better in studies and had a pretty

girlfriend. He thought you forgot him in all that.’

He takes a deep breath and sighs. ‘Sumi liked him,’ he says. There is a

hint of nostalgia and a little favour of first love, and the first heartbreak, in his tone.

‘Sumi liked him? He thought she came to him because you had started ignoring her!’ Avantika says.

‘No, it wasn’t that. Even when Sumi and I were together, Sumi liked him better. But Ritam was always a bully and Sumi was scared of him.’

‘So? What happened?’ I ask.

‘She said she was falling out of love with me. She wanted me to talk to Ritam about her since we were the best of friends. I still loved Sumi so I didn’t want to do that. I was too arrogant to hear that my girlfriend liked someone else. Worse still, my best fiend! I told her that Ritam and I didn’t

 get along well. I stopped talking to Ritam to make her believe that. But she just didn’t stop talking about him. So, I started talking to other girls to make her jealous, but it didn’t work. One day, she left me and went to him ...’

His voice trails off again.

‘And?’

‘She never came back and I lost both of them,’ he says and looks at the

diary. It looks like he wants to read it.

‘He wrote in the diary that he is sorry that he envied you and stopped

talking to you. He missed you,’ Avantika says.

‘I missed him too, but more than that, I was angry at him for dating my

ex-girlfriend. I know it wasn’t his fault. We were best friends and I stopped talking to him. I shouldn’t have done that.’ A lone tear rolls down his cheek. I like him instantly. Tears usually don’t lie. They are the most honest form of expression. He continues to tell us fondly about their football victories. Piyush talks for long and speaks very lovingly about his friend.

‘It was very hard to understand Ritam at times,’ he says. ‘Sometimes, he used to act all angry and rough. But on other occasions, he used to seem like a very docile guy. It was amusing.’

‘Do you have a picture?’ Avantika asks.

‘Not right now. But I might have one at home.’

Damn. Digital cameras—a few years too late.

‘So, you weren’t in touch with him after school at all?’ I ask.

‘No,’ he says. ‘I went to Rourkela for my graduation and got busy. My

mother was not keeping well, so I had to take care of that too. Everything else took a back seat. There have been times that I have looked for him on social networking sites, but have never found him.’

While we are talking, the receptionist enters for the third time. The first two times she had said that there was something important from Piyush’s boss. This time it looks urgent and something that can’t wait.

‘I really have to go. How long are you two in Bhopal?’

‘We are leaving tonight,’ I say.

‘Oh, okay,’ he says.

‘We will let you know if we stay for longer. We would love to hear more

about him,’ I say.

‘So, whom are you meeting next?’ he asks.

‘We wanted you to tell us that,’ Avantika says. ‘Do you know he had a

sister?’

 ‘Yes, I do. I don’t remember the name ... Umm ... Oh wait—Nivedita, right?’

‘Do you know where she is?’ I ask.

‘I’m not sure. I’ve never met her,’ he says.

‘Did you know she is crippled?’

‘What?’ Piyush takes a little time to comprehend what Avantika had just

said.

‘You didn’t know?’ Avantika asks.

‘He had once asked me for money because he wanted to see her in

Gandhinagar. I thought he was lying and I refused. We had a huge fight that day. I didn’t know—’

He looks like he regrets it. Until just a moment ago, he still thought that Ritam had been lying about the crippled sister. He feels sorry and it shows on his face.

He looks at us and asks, ‘Can you make me copies of the diary? Of the parts I am in?’

‘Sure. We will leave it at the reception.’

‘Thank you,’ he says feebly.

Before he leaves, Avantika asks him if he knows where Sumi is or what

her full name is.

‘Sumi Das,’ he says. ‘I have no idea where she is ... Sumi and Ritam

were my only good friends in my schooldays. If you meet Sumi, please tell her that I really cared about her.’

Just as he is about to leave, Avantika asks him—just out of curiosity— what Ritam looked like. It is awkward for him to describe another guy at first, but then he tells us that Ritam stood at about five-ten, was strongly built—hardened from football practice, I presume—and had a sharp jawline on which he was often complimented. He hugs us both and leaves the room. Avantika and I look at each other, feel sorry for Piyush, and ask the receptionist to make copies of the first few pages of the diary.

‘Mumbai?’ I ask Avantika.

‘Gandhinagar first,’ she says.

‘And we don’t have to call him the dead guy any more.’

‘Yes. Ritam sounds much better.’

Nivedita.

Avantika has a heart as big as anyone you can imagine. Her office project

is lagging behind and she is getting a little restless with the road trip. She

 has to get back to office, but I know she wouldn’t do that before she meets Nivedita. I can tell that she really wants to meet her. Gandhinagar—another thirteen-hour drive stares us in the face. I wish we could’ve taken buses like Ritam did every fifteen days to meet his crippled sister. But, instead, we have Shrey’s creaky, rotten car.

15 November 2010

‘When you know that your happiness is like a sacrificial lamb for the happiness of the person you care about, you should realize that you’re in love. The most incurable form of love.’

Ragini has been a little sad since the past few days. I knew the reason but I insisted she tell me and she did. It was not something I enjoyed doing but I found my bits of happiness in my own small way. I imagined her talking about me the way she talked about Nigel. How lucky I would be if I could make her eyes sparkle the way Nigel did. I wanted to be the guy she loved, but life had other plans.

The sparkle didn’t last too long. After a while, she started to cry and said she missed him too much. She told me that Nigel had been trying to get her an internship at the bank he works in but things were going nowhere. Our vacations are scheduled to start in another fifteen days and it was too short a time to go through the entire procedure for securing an internship. I don’t know how I feel about that. I have mixed feelings. I would be happy to see her happy. I would be sad to see her happy with someone else. After a little while, she stopped crying and smiled at my efforts to make her smile.

I wish I could have frozen that moment in time. I wish I had, because the very next moment, her phone rang and it was from Nigel’s company. During the entire duration of the phone call, she looked at me with wide-open eyes, bit her nails and smiled at me. She shrieked like a little kid after disconnecting the call and hugged me. Her application had been accepted. Being in love is difficult. When she was right in front of me and smiled, I was glad. Now that I am alone, I am consumed by my loneliness and the hollowness of the times to come. She was going to Bangalore. And not to meet Nigel just once but to stay. For two months. Her little gamble had paid off.

Nigel called to confirm the news. Suddenly, she was ecstatic. She passed her phone to me and Nigel asked if I too wanted to apply. I turned it down. Ragini begged me and insisted I come with her. I said no. It hurt me to say so, but going with her would have hurt more. And she would not need me anyway. She would have Nigel to take care of her. He was all she ever needed.

I feel like being alone for a while. But still, I wish I could see her tomorrow

18 November 2010

‘And when you agree to hurt yourself for the happiness of the other, you know you’re never going to stop loving that person.’

Ragini was supposed to be happy, but she wasn’t. After all, the way things were panning out, it seemed like even God was in on their plans. She said she was in a bad mood and would be okay soon. I didn’t buy that. Something was wrong and I had to know. I probed. She broke down and held on to me for dear life. She asked me if I considered her a good friend and whether I would do anything to help her. I feel lost when she asks me questions like these. Sometimes, I am very tempted to tell her the truth, but pull back thinking it’s too early and too stupid.

I told her I would do anything to make her happy. She stopped crying and told me that her parents weren’t allowing her to go to Bangalore alone. Unwillingly, I asked her how I

could help. Her parents had told her that she would be allowed to go only if someone else from the college was going to Bangalore for the internship too. With tears in her eyes, she asked me if I would. I was the reason for her tears. It was because of me that those beautiful eyes had shed tears, the cute nose had crinkled and the sweetest girl in the world was sad. I was angry at myself for it and I made up my mind. Yes, I would accompany her to Bangalore. I couldn’t have been selfish and said no to her. While she smiled, my life came to a standstill. Two months. Nigel and Ragini, in front of my eyes. I shudder to think what would become of me.

All the paperwork is to be done and we have to leave in ten days. I didn’t see Ragini in college later today. She was way too excited about going to Bangalore and had lots of shopping to do. After all, she had a boyfriend to impress. Since the day her internship was confirmed, she has changed. She looks ... hot, yes, that’s what people would call her. She has done something with her hair ... the natural waves and cute curls are missing. All that is left is stick-straight hair, which falls all over her face and gives her a sharp look. The sweetness is gone. Did Nigel ask her to? I knew she loved her curls and would never destroy them. Maybe I am thinking too much.

She told me all about her day and how much fun she had shopping. But after a while, she fell silent and had a dreamy look on her face. On our way back home, I saw her look out of the window, wordlessly. She had stopped talking. She must have been tired. But her eyes weren’t. They were still dreamy and thinking about someone. And as I saw her look out of the window, I noticed her lips curve into a little smile. I wish she would remain like this, happy, forever. Even if her happiness was because of someone else.

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