PART 1 #9
An hour later, we are in their room practising the dance moves.
The more drunk they get, the better they move.
I have tweaked their choreography a little, borrowing from the dance routine from Jagath and Zeenath’s performance last year.
I concoct a lethal shot of a third J?germeister, a third Chivas and a third tequila and pass it around.
I can see their eyes cloud over in real time.
Two of the boys have named me their new best friend, ‘bhai for life’, and have added me to their close friends on Instagram.
One of them has vomited, has had a fresh lime soda and is drinking again.
Empty bottles of Black Label, Absolut and beer litter the tables.
Everyone’s remembering the girls who have broken their hearts.
‘And to think of it, you weren’t even coming!’ says Aditya, who’s on the cusp of getting too drunk for his own function.
I warn him that he has had the last drink of the evening. After one final shot of J?germeister for everyone else but him and Gaurav, we make our way to the venue.
I don’t know if it’s the alcohol in my system or if it’s genuine, but I’m startled by how beautiful the venue is.
But then again, Vanita’s taste has always been impeccable.
The sangeet venue—dressed in black and gold like all of us, lit up in glittering fairy lights—is small, but its elegance is beyond question.
My eyes inadvertently flit around, trying to spot Aanchal.
I relished the frustration on her face when I’d met her earlier.
In that, I’d found relief. I want a bit of it again.
I catch sight of her from afar.
She’s with Vanita’s friends at the bar where the bartender is tossing bottles into the air and whipping up strange-looking drinks that everyone tastes and crinkles their noses at.
Aanchal’s black lehenga, intricately embroidered with gold, catches the light and shimmers.
She looks better than I had imagined she would when I had picked it up from the showroom and packed it in the suitcase.
She has little or no make-up, or make-up that fools you that there is no make-up.
She does this intentionally because she’s a rank narcissist and wants to shove her raw beauty in other people’s heavily made-up, Botox-ed faces.
My gaze drifts to her exposed back and the tiny knot that secures her shimmering choli in place.
Inside me, a fury intertwines with an unexpected desire for her.
What was I thinking all those years ago?
That I could be with her? There’s nothing good that can come out of beauty like hers.
Only pain. As her lips move while talking to a girl, all I want to do is push her against one of the fake pillars and shut her up with a kiss and let the past obliterate itself.
I push that thought out of my mind. Nothing good is going to come of it. She’s a lost cause.
We walk towards the bar.
The wedding venue glitters in the background.
For a couple of years after the break-up, I had tormented myself with daydreams of Aanchal and me getting married.
In my mind, we had been through it all—the grand weddings in different destinations, the little varmala games, the stunning lehengas, the happy tears, the wild dance parties, the post-wedding orgasms and naked afternoons spent in the plunge pools in expensive honeymoon hotels.
I had imagined taking her hand and promising to be with her forever, again and again, in this life and the next.
I had fought hard to clear my mind of those thoughts, cauterize my mind and my heart from her.
But now, seeing her like this, it’s like driving a serrated knife through those wounds and twisting it.
The impossibility of it all tortures me.
Our eyes meet, and for the tiniest of moments, all my anger melts away, replaced by a rush of love that I know will never be reciprocated, or respected.
I don’t know what’s worse: that you’re loved back or your love’s seen as an inconvenience?
Loving Aanchal is a constant act of self-inflicted pain.
I look at her, happy, uncaring, unbothered about the past, and like in a cheap Bollywood flick, I want to grab her hand, take her to the mandap, drop a flaming lighter into the havankund, stride through the seven pheras, then lead her to the wedding suite and take her.
We walk towards the bar where she stands. I recognize her perfume immediately.
The guys with me place their orders with the bartender.
‘Last drink,’ I warn Gaurav, who walks away from his sister and me.
Aanchal notices me when she turns. The laughter dies from her face. I enjoy this more.
‘You stayed back?’
‘Is it difficult for you to imagine that someone could stick around?’
‘That’s not a very smart clapback, Daksh. Maybe it’s a good thing our relationship ended because you would have given me such weak replies all my life.’
‘You don’t deserve the best of me.’
She looks straight at me, and then nonchalantly sips her drink.
I make a show of scanning her from head to toe and then say, ‘By the way, you look stunning. It’s as if I have a crush on you again like old times, but the only difference is that you’re also a horrible person.’
She laughs. ‘I would take you seriously, Daksh, but by now I know I should take nothing you say seriously. You’re clearly not a man of your word.’
I point to a girl who’s at the chaat counter. ‘That’s Vanita’s friend, Tejal, right?’ I ask Aanchal. ‘The one in green? What do you think of her?’
She throws her head back in annoyance. ‘Daksh, we are not seventeen. Let’s not play this game of making each other jealous. Yes, she’s Tejal, and if something does happen between the two of you, I will be quite happy,’ she says.
I never got how ex-lovers say they are happy for each other. I harbour no such feelings.
She chuckles and says, ‘But, Daksh, listen to me, just don’t drag her into this mandap and ask her to marry you tomorrow morning.’
Talking to Aanchal is like this. Every moment is like getting my heart ripped out.
‘And for the record, I’m very happy about Rajat and you too,’ I tell her.
She eyes me with disgust. ‘We are friends.’
‘Your definition of friends is rather broad. So Rajat, apart from being the guy with whom you cheated on Vicky, is also the guy who helped you get the abortion pills because . . . let me guess . . . he also wanted to sleep with you again?’
The disgust in her eyes changes to rage. ‘You’re a hypocrite, Daksh. Rajat, as a friend, did what you couldn’t, even while saying you loved me.’
‘I think I have had enough,’ I say with a chuckle. ‘Just wanted to hurt you a little. I quite like the anger in your voice. Nice.’
I walk away from her.
Later, when it’s time for us to dance, the ladkawalas (people from the groom’s side) knock it out of the park. Aanchal’s face is as white as snow when we steal the limelight from their performance, which was middling at best, and I enjoy the disappointment and defeat that’s writ large on her face.
10.
Aanchal Madan
‘THIS IS AMAZING!’ I scream drunkenly, happily, in Vanita’s ear.
Vanita responds with a beautiful, bright smile and I hug her. I want her to get married, or at least have a wedding, once every couple of months.
It’s 11 p.m. and we have been dancing since 8 p.m. The DJ knows everyone’s drunk so the only music he shuffles is popular Punjabi music and none of the techno-EDM stuff that everyone has to pretend to like.
There are a bunch of dholwalas who drum like their life depends on it.
Like us, they are soaked in sweat and Vanita’s parents have rained dirham notes on them.
A couple of aunties have even hit on them seeing their vigour; quite telling of the state of their marriages.
Every now and then, Daksh and I collide with each other on the dance floor.
But both he and I are too drunk to mind it.
I even welcome it, and it fills me with shame, which I wash away with another shot.
Every time his hand grazes mine, it feels electric.
When I twirl and his fingers brush against my bare back, little jolts run through my spine and bring my body to life.
Every time he looks at me, I’m sharply reminded of the hunger with which he used to take me.
It’s as if my body crumbled and melted with his touch.
Of the times we did it, in rented bedrooms, hotels, cars, empty movie halls, it never felt like the sedate term making love.
It was always dirty, we always came out of it bruised and battered, our souls imprinted, the experiences etched in our minds.
It was a duel in which we both were always winners.
No, we didn’t make love, he fucked me, and I fucked him.
Long after we were done, I could feel the little tremors in my body just thinking about it.
Long after we broke up, I would read his sexts, about what he would do to me.
They were never the childish ‘I would do you so hard, and it will be the best sex you have ever had’ but used to be paragraphs detailing every lingering touch.
Even after I hated him, I longed for his body to touch me again and I wanted to be fucked like that again.
When we do dance together, one of the aunties circulates a couple of currency notes over our heads and then throws them in the air for the dholwalas to gather up.
The guys who were hitting on me now don’t.
I can almost hear them murmur, ‘She will be in his room tonight.’ And I wish, just for this night, he wasn’t him, and he was just a guy I’d met at a wedding in a black kurta, beads of sweat running down his hair, dancing like there’s no tomorrow.
The girls who were hitting on Daksh have also backed off.