Chapter 24 Aditi
Aditi
Earlier, when the plane took off safely and the land had vanished below us, a secret, shameful part of me buzzed with excitement. A childish thrill. Raghav must have seen it on my face. My first time outside the country.
‘First time?’ he had asked, his voice low.
How little we know about each other, I thought.
I had nodded and stared out the window. ‘We were supposed to go to Thailand,’ I had finally managed to whisper. ‘For our honeymoon. Also here, and a couple of other places. It doesn’t cost money to make plans. I never really thought we would follow-up.’
He nodded.
I ask him. ‘Is it your first time?’
It didn’t look like it. At the immigration, he was confident about what to do and what to say. ‘I went to Dubai last year for work. And Sri Lanka with . . . with Megha. How many lies did we have to tell to make that happen?’ He chuckles sadly. ‘That’s it.’
Now, I wake up mid-flight. Raghav is next to me, head tilted back against the seat, lips slightly parted.
He’s sleeping. He looks peaceful, a far cry from the anger and the anxiousness that’s a part of him.
I watch him a little too long. Wonder what he must be like, what he was like, and what would he be like five years from now.
I check my phone. No service. Of course.
But the thumb doesn’t care about logic. Raghav calls my phone and my Kindle my digital pacifiers.
The plane wobbles slightly. Turbulence. My hand shoots out to the armrest, gripping it so tightly my knuckles go white. Beside me, Raghav stirs and wakes up.
‘Fuck,’ he says and grabs my hand. ‘We are going to be okay,’ he continues, despite being shit scared himself.
The airplane stabilizes in a minute or two. I let out a startled laugh. Neither him nor I sleep for the rest of the flight even as everyone around us snores and shifts and pulls blankets over themselves and their families. We land to a smattering of applause. We are too scared to do anything.
The air that hits me as I escape the plane is the first sign I’m somewhere new: somewhere not India.
A thick, wet blanket smelling of flowers, salt and something sweet, like incense.
I should be able to do my own stuff, but I let go.
Raghav leads me through the airport, processes our visas, pays for them, walks me to the conveyor belt, loads our suitcases and exchanges currency.
By the time I’m useful, we are already in the taxi.
‘You okay?’ he asks me.
‘It’s humid here, no?’ I uselessly tell him.
The journey from the airport to the hotel is a complete sensory assault.
I’m glued to the window of the taxi, trying to process everything.
The roads are a flowing river of scooters, thousands of them, weaving around each other.
I see tiny, intricate offerings made of woven palm leaves and bright flowers, placed carefully on the ground.
‘What are those?’ I ask, pointing.
Raghav pulls out his phone and does a quick search. ‘Offerings,’ he says, reading out. ‘They put them out every day. The island is 90 per cent Hindu even though Indonesia itself is Muslim-majority.’
What he reads, I can see out there. I see strange, beautiful temples with carved monsters—or mythical figures, whatever they are—tucked between concrete storefronts.
I could ask Raghav to look it up again, but I let the mystery simmer.
The strangeness and niceness of it all is overwhelming.
It’s so vibrant, so unapologetically and shamelessly alive.
Then we arrive at the hotel—the hotel Aman always wanted to come to.
I know what he would have done. He would have whipped out his phone and clicked pictures of every corner.
I would have pointed out that there needs to be people in the picture, but he wouldn’t have listened and found beauty in the corners of the columns, the edge of the swimming pool and whatnot.
To be fair, it’s quite something, this hotel.
It’s a different world. The lobby is a vast, open-air pavilion with a soaring thatched roof and no walls, looking out on to a series of infinity pools that seem to melt into the jungle and the sea beyond.
pictures didn’t do justice to what I can see here.
‘No need to be nervous,’ says Raghav. ‘You have paid for this place.’
‘But I haven’t . . . Aman has,’ I say. ‘I . . . I can’t believe this is a real place.’
A woman with a flower tucked behind her ear hands us cool, scented towels and something to drink. I see Raghav smiling. He notices me noticing him and wipes it off. Is this the dance we will do all our trip? Be happy and then be guilty about being happy?
‘This is fancy,’ agrees Raghav, even as he hands over our passports and completes the check-in formalities.
In the room, my awe only deepens. There’s a fruit basket with spiky red and yellow fruits I don’t recognize. Raghav holds up a note that reads, ‘Happy Memories Begin Here’, which feels like a cruel joke.
And there’s a private pool!
I stare at it. Raghav stares at it.
‘This is why he wanted to come here,’ I say.
‘For anyone who has the money, it’s worth it,’ he says.
‘Are you hungry?’
We order room service—Raghav asks for suggestions and orders Indonesian fare—and we sit with our legs dipped in the pool.
When the food comes, we eat on the pool beds.
The food’s average and yet we wolf it down.
The flight must have been taxing, because I don’t remember falling asleep, but I wake to the sound of the balcony door creaking open.
It’s dusk. The sky is a bruised purple and orange.
In the balcony, Raghav holds a cheap new phone, now active with the old personal number he had abandoned in the raw months after the tragedy.
For the past year, his work phone had been his shield, reducing his life to a manageable set of professional contacts, delivery messages from Blinkit, and the like.
He had only reactivated the old SIM for the practical reason of avoiding work calls and roaming fees on the trip.
But then as I watch him, he’s talking to someone.
A lot of talking. And then a lot of listening.
Is he smiling? He’s plucking flowers as he’s listening to what’s being said from the other side.
Is it a girl? Has he started talking to someone?
A part of me feels a sharp, unexpected pang.
He talks to the person for ten whole minutes and I decide to pretend to be asleep.
I walk over slowly after he puts the phone away.
When he turns, there are still remnants of a smile on his face.
When he catches me staring, he wipes his smile off his face.
‘Are we going to do something today?’ he asks, rather uncharacteristically.
I want to ask him who’s the person on the phone, but I don’t. Before I can say anything, his phone rings again.
‘A video call from an unknown number?’ he says, and cuts the call.
The call comes again, and this time it’s audio. Tejal’s voice streams out. ‘HEY! SWITCH ON VIDEO!’
And Raghav does. Tejal’s face fills the screen, grinning, with Sumrit waving enthusiastically in the background. But it’s the background that catches my eye. It’s our apartment.
‘Surprise!’ Tejal yells. ‘Guess where we are!’
‘How did you—’ Raghav’s interrupted by Sumrit.
‘Bro! We had keys remember! For surprise checks?’ Sumrit says, coming closer to the phone. ‘For emergencies. And this is an emergency. An emergency need for privacy, bro.’
‘Why are you in my room?’ I ask.
‘Raghav’s is locked!’ says Tejal. ‘Anyway! Now show us the room! How is it? Is it fancy? Are you guys having fun?’
A familiar pang of guilt hits me, but I also feel a spark of excitement. I take the phone from Raghav and flip the camera, giving them a quick tour of the room, the balcony and the private pool. Sumrit lets out a low whistle.
‘Bro!’ he says. ‘But you guys deserve this. Seriously. Have fun.’
‘Yeah,’ Tejal adds, her voice softening for a moment. ‘Forget everything else. Just be there. And take many, many days off. We need the apartment.’
We all laugh. After we hang up, a comfortable silence settles between us.
Raghav looks at me, asks again(!) ‘So?’ he asks, repeating his earlier question. ‘Do you want to go out?’
I find myself nodding. This is the first time he has ever asked me this question, and this is the first time I have said yes to it.
An hour later, Raghav and I step out for a walk. The resort glows with a soft, expensive light, and so do the tourists, tanned and smiling. We find a scooter rental tucked behind a massage parlour offering deep tissue massages at throwaway prices.
Raghav points to a dented red scooter. He starts to haggle half-heartedly, his heart is clearly not in it.
‘Twenty thousand rupiah?’ he offers, sounding more like he’s asking a question.
I elbow him gently. He’s only doing this because I insisted on paying.
Left to his own devices, he’d pay the first price they quoted and get ripped off, just like he usually does.
After a bit of back-and-forth, I steer him through and we settle on a price.
He hands me a helmet to try on and a sleek black one for himself.
Just then, his phone rings again. He squints at the screen, an unknown number flashing.
‘Must be Tejal?’ I say.
He answers it on speakerphone while fumbling with the chin strap. ‘Hello?’
A man’s stern voice crackles through the tiny speaker. ‘So, you puncture my tires and then run off to God knows where?’
Raghav’s whole body goes rigid. His face tightens. ‘Papa,’ he says, his voice dropping ten degrees. He tugs at the helmet strap, trying to unclip it. And then, in a low grumble he says, ‘Why did you call?’
‘Kahan hai tu?’
‘What do you want?’ Raghav repeats, his voice strained with impatience. He tries to take the helmet off now, but it’s jammed, sitting awkwardly on his head. With a growl of frustration, he tries to turn the phone off loudspeaker and jam it inside the helmet, but it’s too tight.
‘I call you and this is how you talk to me?’
‘I didn’t ask you to call me,’ Raghav grinds out, giving up on the phone and pulling uselessly at the helmet strap again.
‘You have gone somewhere,’ his father says, his tone accusatory. ‘Where?’
‘It doesn’t matter where—’
His father’s angry voice cuts him off sharply. ‘This girl you’re with? Is she of that sort too?’
I watch as Raghav’s eyebrows knit together, a nerve throbbing on his forehead. ‘What do you mean, “that sort”?’ he asks, his voice dangerously low. ‘Careful how you talk to me.’
‘Haan? Is that how you talk to your father?’
Raghav lets out a bitter laugh. ‘I’m being kind,’ he spits, his voice dripping with contempt. ‘And the only reason I’m even talking to you is because you’re still the father of my sister. Otherwise, you two . . .’
‘You two?’ his father bellows. ‘Talking about your Maa like that? Is this how we brought you up?’
‘Brought me up?’ Raghav scoffs, abandoning the helmet to glare at the phone in his hand. ‘Thank god I’m not like you guys.’
‘What do you mean? All this just because of that chinki girl? Anyway, I have not called to talk to you about that. I want to—’
‘Shut up, Papa, just FUCKING SHUT UP,’ he says, voice trembling with rage. ‘Stop embarrassing yourself. Calling me like a fucking desperate father? Did I call you? No. Just go away.’
‘You’re swearing at me?’ his father shouts. ‘Listen, this is about—’
‘Saale,’ Raghav roars, the word ripping out of him, ‘if you were in front of me, I would have slapped you!’
‘I’m your father!’ his father says and speaks to someone near him. ‘You asked me to call him and you see how he’s talking—’
‘Maa chuda le, chutiye!’ he screams, all control gone. ‘I don’t care who the fuck you are! Why the fuck did you call me?’
‘Look at you! Look at what that girl has done to you!’
A guttural roar of pure agony tears from Raghav’s throat. ‘SHE IS DEAD BECAUSE OF YOU! Just fuck off! Just fuck offf!’ he screams into the phone and then throws it with all his might.
It shatters on the ground. He stumbles towards the pieces and stomps on them again and again. He paces the length of the narrow alley, once, twice, a caged animal.
‘FUCK!’ he screams.
He looks like he wants to punch a wall, to scream, to shatter something. And then suddenly, he slumps on the ground, all the fight gone, and just cries. Before I can centre myself to sit down with him, he gets up and wipes his tears as if nothing happened.
‘Raghav,’ I say.
He turns to me. ‘This is what they do. this is family . . . this is the fucking thing that Karan Johar makes movies about. Let’s leave.’
I nod. And then turn away from him and towards the scooter. ‘Yes, let’s go.’
Without a word, he walks back to the scooter and gets on.
I climb on behind him, my arms wrapping tightly around his waist. It’s not a gentle hold.
He kicks the engine to life. We drive out of the alley and on to the road.
He’s driving too fast, the wind whipping my hair.
The world becomes a blur of lights and shadows.
It feels like an escape. A desperate escape.
Or maybe there’s no escape at all. Maybe we shouldn’t have come.