Chapter 17 Raghav
Raghav
There’s a spot behind a metro pillar. A known blind spot.
It’s where we have hung out before. And there’s a sewer five minutes away, in case someone needs to vomit.
Most likely that will be Aditi. She’s not a lightweight.
If anything, she might be a budding alcoholic.
Once she starts, she can’t stop. And when she does, it’s too late.
Lately, drinking is Sumrit and Tejal’s go-to in the healing process they have decided for us.
We indulge them because they have been there for us.
Right from Day One.
Tejal had almost camped in our house and put Aditi on suicide watch.
She would freak out every time Aditi would go to the balcony.
As Tejal told me later, she was the one who recruited Sumrit—a reluctant participant to say the least—to help me get better.
The first month was the worst, obviously.
A lot of crying happened. Existential crisis, what’s the point of living .
. . that sort of stuff. Tejal said all the right words, you’re loved, live for us—aided by the internet, I’m sure.
Sumrit was always in the background, helping in a more functional way.
When my office e-mailed asking when I would be back, it was he who stopped me from sending a ‘Fuck you’ to them.
He would restock groceries, pay the bills, keep the house running.
Once, I heard him say to Tejal, ‘Maybe we are spoiling them. We should let them do things on their own.’
‘Are you crazy?’ Tejal had thundered and gave him a laundry list of things to do.
It was Tejal who had kept Aditi from going full-tilt berserk on her family.
Aditi’s Bhaiya had reached out, knocked on the door one day and demanded she come home with them.
Aditi had brandished a knife and threatened to slit her throat right there if he took one step further.
With the hindsight of a year, it sounds crazy, but at the time I remember watching it unfold and finding it the most logical thing to do.
In fact, I envied her. I saw her dead on the floor, blood spilling from her throat, and was jealous. I wanted to be dead, too.
When her Bhaiya didn’t let up, Aditi went on the offensive and told her family about her jiju’s affair.
It was only when she threatened to drop all the proof in the family WhatsApp group that her family retreated.
For a couple of months, she would send threatening voice messages to them until Tejal, as she later confessed, made her stop.
She had also found a new project. When it was slated that the airlines would pay compensation to everyone’s kin who had died in the aircraft, the airlines tried to bury everyone in documents.
Aditi took it on herself to fill out people’s forms, print copies, make folders, get everything attested.
She buried herself in the torture of administrative work
I didn’t harbour any feelings for my family.
I was dead, instead. They didn’t evoke any emotions within me.
When Shilpi reached out and then my parents, I just .
. . they were strangers to me. They said conciliatory things, but they were just empty words to me.
When I told them I didn’t want to talk to them any more, that they were dead to me, it was not out of spite, but out of feeling nothing.
There were times I tried to evoke something in me, think of them as dead—a road accident, a fire in the house, cancer—but even then, I felt nothing.
The only people who meant anything to me were Tejal, Sumrit and our housemaid.
Trauma brings people together and although it didn’t bring Aditi and me any closer—we often told each other we brought bad luck to each other—it did bring Tejal and Sumrit together.
A late night turned into a make-out session, a decision that led to Tejal letting go of her old boyfriend.
Within a week of that, they started dating.
They had announced it with excitement and got blank faces from both Aditi and me.
That whole year feels like a blurry, dark movie now. And today is just another scene.
At the metro pillar, Tejal spreads a newspaper like a picnic mat.
The concrete is warm. She plays soft, bass-heavy Pakistani music from her speaker.
Aditi makes her usual joke about funding terrorists.
We all ignore it. I rip the ice packet, drop cubes into plastic glasses, pour uneven drinks.
Tejal plates the momos. For a while, no one speaks.
The chutney burns my throat. The momos are rubbery. The drink is still warm.
We wait—for the drinks to hit, for the feelings to surface. As I knew they would, around the second round, I say, ‘So, what now?’
Tejal flicks a peanut at a crow. Misses. ‘I don’t know,’ she replies. ‘About what, exactly?’
‘I think what Raghav wants to ask is, do you think we’ll ever be normal people?’ Aditi asks. The alcohol frees the questions she’s always carrying within. ‘Will you have to keep doing this all your life?’
Tejal snorts. ‘Normal is bullshit. You don’t “move on” from this. You just learn to carry it. The question is, are you going to carry it, or are you going to let it drown you right here?’
‘Don’t start with your motivational bullshit again,’ I tell Tejal.
‘Don’t talk to my friend like that,’ Aditi says.
‘And bhai, she’s my girlfriend,’ says Sumrit. ‘Listen to what she’s saying.’
‘I’m sorry, Tejal, but I’m not sure I want to do what you’re saying,’ I tell her. ‘Carrying it sounds exhausting. I would rather just give in to it.’
‘Bro, why are you scaring us?’ says Sumrit.
‘What do you want me to say?’ I ask. ‘That I’m fine? I’m not, bhai. And there’s no changing that. The words you say, she says, are kind, nice, but . . . I . . . I still feel the same things.’
‘C’mon,’ Tejal protests. ‘You guys are doing much better. You can’t deny it.’
‘I like how you force me to tell you that I’m doing better,’ I say. ‘. . . that you’re doing a good job. Fine, you are. And yes, I am better, she’s better. But I think this is it. This base level of sadness will always remain.’
Tejal looks at Aditi for support but gets only silence. She’s staring at her drink.
Then Aditi says it. ‘The money came. The compensation. For the crash. Aman’s.’
Tejal’s head jerks towards her. There’s a smile that I don’t miss. It’s a lot of money: Rs 1.8 crore. Tax-free. The smile’s ugly, but I forgive her. It’s life-changing money. Just comes from death, that’s it.
‘I don’t know what to do with it,’ she says, her eyes becoming glassy.
Tejal shrugs, tries to play it cool. I can tell she’s forcing it. ‘Why? It’s your money. You should keep it.’
‘It’s not mine. What’s mine is no longer here.’
Sumrit throws me a look as if to say why is it even a question. It’s Aditi’s money and she should keep it. I gesture for him to shut up.
Tejal’s face hardens. ‘Do you think his parents deserve it more than you do? They stopped being his family long before he—’
Aditi finishes the sentence. ‘I’m not saying they deserve it. I’m not saying I’m giving it to them. All I’m saying is that it’s not mine.’
‘Sumrit, don’t,’ Tejal warns as he opens his mouth.
He ignores her. ‘You can put it in an index fund,’ says Sumrit, trying to be helpful and practical. ‘The interest alone would be . . . but don’t donate it, NGOs are scams, bro.’
‘Look, Aditi,’ says Tejal, cutting Sumrit off with a glare.
‘The money’s for family. His family abandoned him and you were with him all through it.
You dragged him out of a depression, you gave him love and the will to live.
A life that got snatched away. This is the universe’s consolation.
You don’t have to feel guilty about taking the money. ’
‘And what do I do with it?’ She points at the beer bottle in her hands. ‘Use his death money to get drunk like this?’
‘Or what, you’ll donate it so you can feel noble about it?’ Tejal fires back at her, her voice sharp. ‘Is that it? You think suffering makes you a better person? Aman wouldn’t want you to be a martyr, Aditi. He would’ve wanted you to live.’
‘She’s right, bro,’ says Sumrit. ‘Both of them would want you two to be happy.’
I roll my eyes. ‘I don’t know whether you have noticed it, but both of them want nothing now. They are dead.’ Then I turn to Aditi and say, ‘Technically, the reason you’re drinking is also him, so you can’t be guilty about it.’
‘And the airlines,’ Tejal adds.
‘No,’ Aditi says, shaking her head as if to clear it. ‘I can’t keep it.’
And that’s the end of it.
We don’t talk about the money any more.
Time slips past as more drinks are poured, memes are shared, momos eaten. When we are all drunk enough and Tejal and Sumrit ascertain that we won’t throw ourselves off the balcony, we help each other up.
‘Feel better?’ Tejal asks as we walk back to the car.
‘You mean, are we still suicidal?’ Aditi asks.
Tejal rolls her eyes. We walk back slowly. The air feels softer now. Soon, we are back at the apartment building. I don’t admit it, but it was good to have them here.
‘You don’t have to come up,’ Aditi tells Tejal.
Aditi hugs Tejal. She doesn’t thank her, even though she wants to.
She doesn’t want her to make a habit of rescuing us.
She wants to wallow in peace. The lift reaches our floor.
I don’t say it, but I know—we both feel it.
That sinking feeling. Behind the door is our temple of grief.
The lift door opens. Someone is standing there.
White shirt tucked into his trousers. Leather shoes. A three-day stubble. Eyebrows furrowed.
‘Aditi?’ he mumbles, his eyes ignoring me completely and fixing on her.
I instinctively move to block him, placing myself between him and Aditi. He smells of alcohol too.
‘The money. It’s ours,’ grumbles Naman.
‘Is it?’
‘Of course,’ he snaps and tries to step around me. I shift my weight, holding my ground.
‘You weren’t even in his life! Chutiye!’ she whispers from behind me, her voice trembling but clear.
That’s the trigger. Naman’s face darkens. ‘Gaali kisko de rahi hai, randi! He was my brother. You think we don’t have a right?’
The words erupt from her. ‘No, you don’t.’
He lunges. Not at me, but past me, shoving me hard to the side. He stumbles but catches himself, his hand reaching for Aditi’s arm. Before he can touch her, I recover my balance, grab his shirt collar and yank him back.
‘Get the fuck away from her,’ I hiss. ‘DID YOU NOT FUCKING HEAR? I told you to back off.’
Naman gives me a strong shove, and my back hits the wall of the corridor. He’s stronger than he looks—fuelled by rage.
‘You think you can stop me?’ he spits, his face inches away from mine.
‘Try me,’ I grunt, pushing him back.
We’re a tangle of limbs now, punching and kicking, a clumsy, pathetic struggle outside the apartment door.
Naman laughs, a short, ugly sound. He shoves me again, and I slam him back against the opposite wall, holding him there by the collar. He slowly eases up but points a finger at Aditi.
‘You think a three-month joke marriage gives you the right to my family’s future? You were a phase he was too nice to end. A mistake. This isn’t over. We’ll make sure everyone remembers that.’
He fixes his shirt, huffs and leaves. We keep standing there for a bit.
I unlock the door. We step inside. My knuckles ache and I can feel my heart hammering against my ribs. The silence is different now. Not heavy with grief, but sharp, electric with rage.
‘You okay?’ I ask, turning to face her.
I see the familiar hardness I had seen before. When she shut out her brother. She looks at me and says, ‘I’m going to encash that cheque.’
I lock the door.