PART 1 #8
First, I didn’t fall in love with Daksh when we were together.
I fell in love with Daksh after he turned his back on me and abandoned me.
Even then, I didn’t fall in love with the complete version of him, but the bits I wanted to cherry-pick.
Not the whole of him, but parts of him. And even parts of him were enough.
When we were together, despite the happiness he brought into my life, I was still too broken from my past to open my heart and truly love him.
Second, our break-up was not my fault—it was his. He might claim victimhood, but the blame rests entirely on him.
‘I never got to start loving him properly. He broke my heart, Vanita. After knowing everything, he . . .’ I explain myself.
The make-up person carries on. I wonder how many secrets make-up people and cab drivers know about their clients.
‘See, I stand by whatever you do. I also feel he’s too intense,’ says Vanita. ‘He’s not for everyone.’
‘I can’t believe it was just forty-three days. It just . . . seemed longer.’
‘How often do you think of Daksh?’
‘Every day,’ I say, without a second thought.
Vanita waves off the hovering make-up brush. ‘Every day? For three years?’
The presence or the absence of Daksh in my life is like an interesting scar. You touch it every day, but it doesn’t mean anything any more.
‘Don’t you think there’s something there?’ asks Vanita.
‘Whatever is there, Vanita, I don’t want it,’ I say. ‘You really think he would have changed now? Have you not heard his podcast with that woman?’
‘You’re jealous of her.’
She glances in my direction and I wave her off dismissively.
‘. . . he’s obsessed about family, raising kids and whatnot. I don’t find myself fitting in there. It was a red flag even then, I don’t know how I missed it. He’s twenty-six, not forty! He’s too much of a . . . man.’
‘Some people would say it’s a massive green flag,’ she argues. ‘His podcast . . . is . . . sorry, not bad.’
Rajat has said the same thing about his podcast. Despite being on my side of the rink, the fact that they listen to it isn’t acceptable to me.
‘I’m not some people,’ I remind Vanita. ‘I don’t want the same things you guys want.
And it wasn’t just that. There was Rabbani in the picture too.
And his father was still recovering. How could I have wrapped myself up in the visions of his future?
I mean, even now, Rabbani’s just nine. He was literally a father.
Being with him would have meant being like a proxy mother to Rabbani who was like . . . six.’
‘He wouldn’t have asked you to do that.’
‘Who knows, Vanita? Who knows how boys turn? All I know is that I should have stuck to my decision. I should have never said yes to him. But no, what did I do? I let him charm me into saying yes to being in a relationship and see what happened . . . do you not see it? I was back in a relationship within . . . like . . . twelve hours of ending one!’
‘Gaurav was telling me Daksh’s father is now a VP in an engineering consulting firm,’ says Vanita.
‘Whatever, Vanita.’
The make-up artist gestures to me to stop talking. I am quiet for a few seconds before I speak again.
‘I just don’t feel I’m mature enough to do anything other than take care of myself. Not a girlfriend, not a wife, not a mother any time soon. It seems like a burden. Even you being in this bridal outfit is insane to me. I can’t do it. I want to be alone.’
She looks at me as though it’s a sad thing to want.
But why can’t I be happy on my own? Why should I have to want someone else to be completely happy?
I truly am completely happy. I have freedom, I have a career, my parents are happy, my brother’s doing well.
Why would I throw a guy in the mix—no matter how good—and spoil it all?
‘Don’t you feel like sharing your life with someone?’ she asks.
Every time I have been asked this question, the tone is one of pity. As if I’m missing out on something.
‘I wake up, I make my tea, I spend some time with my parents, then go to work where I have the best time. I come back home or go out with office people or acquaintances, watch TV and go to sleep. I like this, Vanita. I know this is not your idea of happiness, but it’s mine. I like this uncomplicatedness.’
Vanita nods, like all committed people do. And I know for a fact that every committed person wonders what it would be like to be single again. Or maybe it’s confirmation bias, I don’t know.
‘If that’s what you wish for,’ she says with a resigned sigh. ‘But don’t you think about how life would have been if, you know . . . you know . . .’
Vanita can’t even bring herself to say it.
She, too, behaves like I’m a murderer of some kind.
Like Daksh does, or I’m guessing even Amruta does.
When push comes to shove, everyone’s minds are still stuck in the 1970s.
Even hard science won’t convince them that it was not murder.
Hard science is how I convinced myself that what I did was not only morally acceptable but also the best choice I could have made.
At thirty-five days, the only sign of a pregnancy is a 2 mm embryo inside you. It’s smaller than the length of the nail of my index finger. It’s a tube-like structure with blood flowing in it. It’s like an artery, one extra vessel of blood.
That’s it.
Even coronary arteries are bigger and thicker than this tube-like structure.
I didn’t want this growth in me. On the thirty-fifth day, I took a tablet just four days after I missed my period.
The medicine blocked progesterone, the lack of which broke down my uterus walls.
A day later, I took another medicine that helped me expel the uterus lining.
The pain and the blood were not more than or less than the period which I should have gotten five days ago.
It was no less clinical than getting rid of a back pain.
It was not a baby. It was not even a foetus. It was not murder. It was science.
And yet Vanita can’t say it.
‘Had I not got the abortion done? Just say what it was,’ I tell Vanita irritably.
‘I—’
‘Don’t you understand that I would have been miserable! Married to Daksh, with a crying two-year-old who I would have hated, and a nine-year-old Rabbani. My career would have been destroyed. Why would I want a life like that?’
9.
Daksh Dey
‘I’m staying,’ I inform Gaurav as I turn away from the window in his room.
‘Are you serious, Bhaiya? Are you sure you’re going to be able to handle it?’
I glare at him.
‘Fine, fine, it’s just that it’s already a stressful environment with Vanita getting married and then my best friend and my sister—’
‘I’m not your best friend, Gaurav.’
‘C’mon! Jagath and Zeenath?’ he argues. ‘You can’t be friends with married people! They keep telling you the same stories. They are boring as fuck.’
‘Take that kurta off, I’m wearing that to the sangeet. You’re wearing something else.’
He grumbles but I stare him down and he behaves like I expect him to.
Every time I browbeat him into behaving, he fires me as the team manager and then immediately apologizes and rehires me.
I’m glad this time we wasted no time doing that.
Though I know sooner or later, I would have to fire myself and convince Gaurav that it needs to stay that way.
The gaming and social media space overhauls every couple of years and soon enough he will need someone savvier, smarter, with the time to devote themselves completely to Gaurav.
Gaurav needs micromanaging and it’s going to be tough to find someone who fits the bill.
We take showers, blast hot air into our hair, pat it down with wax, shave and are ready in fifteen. Gaurav’s pleading all this while to drink.
‘Only three drinks,’ I allow him, just to make him shut up.
At his third Absolut-Red Bull, he gets chatty, irritating, and I’m already regretting my decision to allow him to drink.
‘Why are you staying?’
I don’t answer him. Partly because I don’t know why I am staying.
And partly because I don’t want to run from Aanchal.
She made a mistake, not me. Why should I be in hiding?
I have moved on, I have built a new life.
She needs to see that. Eventually, everyone will find someone to love and she will end up alone, clutching the husk of the dreams she had and realizing they weren’t worth much.
I am not going to tell Gaurav that I heard the desperation in his sister’s voice, a need to make things okay between us, and when I disparaged her, I noticed anger and discomfort.
I liked that. Maybe she’s right. I’m not a nice person.
I couldn’t enjoy our love, but I could enjoy the little revenges instead.
‘What’s the real reason to stay?’ he asks with a stupid smile that I want to smack off his face.
Just then, the bell rings.
Aditya and his guy friends come streaming in, drunk, loud and full of hugs and energy.
I realize I’m not drunk enough for this.
For this wedding, for this happiness, for facing Aanchal.
Big fans, they tell Gaurav effusively. Gaurav, who’s now happy-tipsy, hugs them warmly and accepts their invitation to play FIFA after the sangeet ends.
Then one guy asks, ‘Hey? Do you want to join in the dance performance?’
Gaurav turns to me to ask. ‘Should we?’
‘Is her friend dancing?’
They all look at each other, confused.
I add, ‘The one from Delhi, the good-looking one?’
‘Aanchal!’ two of them squeal immediately. ‘She is!’
I see that she still has the same effect on men as she used to.
‘Then we’ve got to beat them, don’t we?’
They all nod.
‘Do we have enough alcohol?’