PART 1 #4
He looks towards us and waits for us to agree. When we don’t react, he continues, ‘Reddit threads are alight about what he says during the game streams. Absolute top stuff.’
The comment section says the same thing about Gaurav Madan in different words: you play well, but we like who you are more.
He’s the only gamer from the community who’s followed widely by people who aren’t into games.
Girls who don’t game call him sensitive and bright.
Guys call him aspirational, crafty and an alpha.
Anyone who spends some time on Gaurav Madan’s online profiles comes to the same realization: that he’s not the usual charmless gamer with the half-developed personality of a frog in a well.
Instead, he’s witty, whip-smart, sensitive, aware of the world, eloquent enough to have an informed and balanced opinion on seemingly everything.
On his game streams, he talks about the developing political situation in the Eastern bloc, Kashmir and Latin America with the same competence he brings to the discussion about the graphics of the new Warcraft game.
‘I don’t see how you guys don’t see how smart he is,’ mumbles Aditya disappointedly.
Vanita and I exchange a knowing glance, for we both know the truth behind Gaurav’s carefully curated online personality.
Gaurav hasn’t morphed into a different person than he was earlier.
He hasn’t suddenly developed an interest in anthropology, geography, pop culture and world politics.
He’s driven, hardworking, courageous, but he’s not what his online persona shows.
Aditya keeps gushing. ‘He’s like a freaking all-knowing Yoda in the skin of a gamer.’
We don’t tell him that Gaurav’s online persona’s fake.
The side of Gaurav Madan that his followers have fallen in love with is not the truth.
The persona isn’t his.
It’s borrowed.
It’s constructed.
It’s Daksh Dey’s persona.
Every time I read a deftly written tweet, listen to Gaurav’s witty remark over a game stream or see an insightful caption on his post, I am acutely aware that each and every word belongs to Daksh.
Every joke, every idea, every observation is his.
Gaurav is a gifted gamer, but Daksh has packaged him into an exciting product that people lap up and love.
Daksh is plenty good at that—making people fall in love with him.
If at Vanita’s wedding, I’m wearing lehengas made by Manish Malhotra, it’s because Daksh made Gaurav likeable enough for hundreds of thousands of people to not just follow him but worship him.
The cult of Gaurav is managed by Daksh.
We get into one of the dozens of steel and glass lifts at the Atlantis. I don’t want to talk about Gaurav any more because if you talk about him, you have to talk about Daksh. The two of them have been conjoined twins since they started working together three years ago.
I steer the conversation in a different direction.
‘I don’t like you,’ I tell Aditya. ‘She’s throwing away her life by getting married to you.’
Vanita mumbles a soft Aw and kisses Aditya’s forehead.
Aditya laughs. ‘Vanita told me that. Trust me, I have tried to tell her that we should wait for a bit. But your friend wants to do all of this right away.’
‘You must have brainwashed my friend. Just good sex doesn’t mean a relationship will last.’
Aditya’s eyes light up like a little child’s. He turns to Vanita. ‘You told her we have good sex?’
‘No, I told her I’m getting married to a guy I have horrible sex with.’
Aditya grows three inches taller, his moustache grows thicker and he takes up more space in the lift. Tell a guy he’s the nicest guy in the world and he would brush it off with a shrug, but compliment his sexual prowess and he will remember it for life.
We turn towards my room. I can hear the revelry that only comes from a place where a wedding party is shacking. There are shouts and laughter and teasing. Vanita swipes my room card. Aditya pulls my suitcase inside.
‘Listen, we are all going to the poolside for drinks. You have fifteen minutes,’ says Vanita.
I hand over the clanging bag of Dubai Duty-Free to Aditya. ‘Then you will need this.’
Aditya peers into the bag. His face breaks into a huge smile. ‘And here I thought you were serious about hating me.’
I roll my eyes.
He continues, ‘You’re now our best friend! Now all we need to do is find a boy for you!’
5.
Daksh Dey
Amruta and I record a three-hour episode on ‘How to Deal with Kids When They Swear and How to Make Them Stop,’ an interesting topic because both of us believe swear words, such as ‘fucking’, ‘behenchod’ and ‘madarchod’, have practical uses in daily life.
Most of the advice we give on our podcast is stolen from articles, books and what we hear in other podcasts.
We can’t be trusted with our own advice and we warn our listeners multiple times in each podcast that we are ‘accidental parents’.
Sometimes, we are so unoriginal we think we are fraudsters earning money by summarizing various sources.
‘You were very funny during the recording. I hate it when you’re funny,’ complains Amruta.
She doesn’t hate it when I’m funny. She likes my jokes, even the silly ones—especially the silly ones. People often underestimate the significance of a partner who effortlessly finds joy in your humour.
She continues, ‘Now our mail ID will be full of Daksh! You’re so cute! messages from women with unhelpful husbands.’
‘Look who’s talking,’ I respond. ‘You have the most number of marriage proposals per mail. You can choose to be married to a thousand men at the same time.’
‘A legitimate nightmare,’ she says with a chuckle.
We have narrowed down the profile of the kind of man who writes Amruta a glowing e-mail.
A mid-forties, divorced (occasionally widowed), polished man, mostly consultants, plenty of smartly managed investments, father of at least one kid, a wife who’s no longer in the picture, a slight paunch, a little entitlement, and a desperation that’s hard to hide despite the corporate speak in the mail.
All of them want to have a ‘conversation’ with Amruta and ‘see where it takes them’. Men update their vocabulary, but they still remain boys.
I can’t entirely blame them.
Amruta has a deep, husky voice and sounds like someone in her early forties, or at least in her mid-thirties.
Despite her reminding everyone that she had her kids early, at eighteen no less, everyone tends to forget she’s only twenty-six.
Sometimes, even I forget she’s only twenty-six.
She doesn’t look a day over nineteen. That she’s 5’1” and has a round face makes her look even younger.
Sometimes I, too, forget I’m twenty-five.
But we feel old when we look at others our age. People our age are still doubled over in front of clubs vomiting their guts out while we are ironing the kids’ uniforms and cutting sandwiches into little cubes, hoping they will eat.
Amruta and I did a two-part podcast about ‘The FOMO of Young Parents’ and came to the very obvious conclusion that we want to do everything: be present with the kids but also attend hazy, face-melting parties, read books with the kids but also go on long drives with no end dates, stay at home but also go on impromptu jaunts, go on solo vacations but also on family trips, watch a kids’ movie but also actively discuss the frequent break-up of people around us.
It’s because of these fairly obvious, unintelligent pieces of advice that we caution our listeners not to take us seriously.
‘You’re getting the mathematics homework done today, okay?’ Amruta warns me the third time in the past few hours.
‘I . . . fine,’ I mumble. ‘I . . . just can’t believe that they are still struggling with subtraction. How can someone—’
‘Don’t shame our kids,’ she cuts me with a laugh. ‘But I agree it’s amazing how bad they are.’
It’s unbelievable how bad Rabbani, nine, and Amruta’s sons, Naman and Nishant, eight, are at mathematics.
We like to tell ourselves that by the time they grow up, AI will make mathematics-related jobs obsolete and it’s not going to matter.
Every couple of months during the parents-teachers meeting, Amruta and I spend twenty humiliating minutes in front of the worried class teacher of 3B, Bal Bharati School, listening to her tell us how badly Rabbani, Naman and Nishant are doing in maths.
Other parents have said they heard that the same concerned class teacher who looks over us now whispers animatedly in the staffroom, speculating about whether something is going on between Amruta and me.
The class teacher’s right.
There’s something between Amruta and me.
We just don’t know what it is, or what to call it.
Our lives fit in like a complex jigsaw puzzle, a tall Jenga tower.
Rabbani and her sons are in the same class, we both live in Gurgaon, we both have flexible day jobs, this tiny podcast and a mid-twenties life that’s not shared by a lot.
And we are both scared.
If we fit in the last piece of the puzzle—get together, label it—and get our lives intertwined, we would be making a decision for too many people. Her parents, my father and the kids. And that scares the living daylights out of us.
My phone rings.
‘Hello . . . what . . . nonsense . . . you serious? . . . no way . . . I will see what I can do . . .’
I cut the call. Instinctively, I open up MakeMyTrip and check the next flight to Dubai. It leaves in two hours.
‘Is everything okay?’ asks Amruta.
‘Indigo forgot to load Gaurav’s luggage,’ I answer. ‘The next Indigo flight is in the night. If the clothes need to get there then, wait, there’s an Air India in a couple of hours—’
She cuts me before I can finish. ‘I’m not teaching the kids, absolutely not!’ she protests.
I’m already getting up. I can still make the flight.
She says, ‘I will let the kids fail rather than teach them subtraction.’