PART 3 #8
I get into the lift after him. As the steel doors close, the proximity of us makes my skin prickle with excitement.
My eyes flit to him as he casually leans against the wall.
His well-defined arms strain against the seams of his T-shirt, thick blue veins snake down the length of his forearm.
I tear my eyes off him and put on his windbreaker.
Immediately, I catch his scent wafting from it.
It’s of earth and sweat. My mind gallops and I try to rein it in to stay in the moment.
It’s just a lift, just a rooftop, I tell myself.
No need to imagine what it would be like to have those arms wrapped around me. Behave yourself.
We step out from the lift on to the highest floor, the twenty-fourth, and climb the steps to the rooftop. Daksh has a key to the door, of course he does, and he opens it for us.
As he walks out, he says with a flourish of his hand, ‘Here’s the clichéd view.’ He points to the city spread out beneath us. ‘And then there’s us under the vastness of the universe. But the most important part is not this . . . the most important, even though clichéd, bit is . . .’
He walks to a corner and I follow him. On the floor, he has assembled a bed with an array of fluffy pillows, a bottle of Absolut, an ice bucket overflowing with ice and a couple of packets of Kurkure. To keep the bugs away, there is also a battery-powered mosquito killer nearby.
‘Now,’ he says, raising his hands in mock defence and smiling warmly, ‘it’s clichéd, very schoolboy behaviour. But if you think about it, I never got to do these things for anyone.’
‘If you had done these things for anyone, I would have wanted to travel back in time and throw the girl off the roof.’
He picks up the bottle of vodka and two plastic glasses. He walks to the edge of the roof and hops up to sit across it. My heart jumps.
‘Oye—’
‘There’s a ledge here,’ he says, signalling me to come over.
He helps me up to sit next to him. He locks my eyes in a warm gaze and says, ‘Things that endured are clichés now.’
‘Fair point. Where are you going with this.’
‘We make fun of clichés because we don’t want to be like everyone else. We think of ourselves as snowflakes, absolutely unique. So, we deny ourselves the simple pleasures of a cliché.’
‘Have you practised this?’ I ask him.
‘I had no better idea for a date in the building, so I had to build a justification for clichés.’
‘I expect nothing less from you,’ I say, wondering if he has had as many imaginary conversations with me as I have had with him.
He pours us a drink. ‘Neat, okay?’
‘Neat’s never okay,’ I counter.
‘Cheers.’
The alcohol burns on its way down.
‘You know, being tipsy is not the alcohol but the dopamine telling you that you’re going to be drunk?’ I tell him.
‘Nothing sexier than knowing how drinks work anatomically when one’s drinking,’ he says.
‘You’re welcome.’
‘Please tell me more about how the compounds react to the enzymes of our body. I want to hear everything.’
I don’t like it when he’s funny, I don’t like it when he goes around in the society talking to people who then giggle and laugh at what he has to say. If he had to be funny, the least he could do is look shabby, terrible, stink, something.
But even now, like right now, the moonlight highlights his annoying handsomeness. The last time I saw him in the motorcycle shop, when he effortlessly hoisted his bike on the platform, he looked rugged. There’s no version of Daksh that I’m not totally in love with.
‘Why didn’t you text me?’ I ask him.
He turns to look at me with his languid, lovely eyes. ‘For the same reason you didn’t text me. We have a history of not being very good for each other.’
‘You’ve ruined me for other boys.’
‘By other boys, do you mean Saket?’
‘He was perfect.’
‘I wouldn’t say perfect,’ he says.
‘And yet it didn’t matter,’ I say.
‘Was it the mind-bending sex?’
‘The sex with you was middling at best,’ I lie.
‘It was incredible for me, life-altering,’ he says, matter-of-factly.
I pretend that my body hasn’t got warm from what he just said. It takes all my strength not to let my mind slip into the thought of his fingers against mine.
‘I think everyone’s shaped by people around them and,’ I tell him what I have been thinking for a while now, ‘your existence has shaped me.’
‘And you have shaped me,’ he says, his voice dropping down a register.
I turn to look at him.
He continues, ‘I can’t imagine a life where you have nothing to do with it. Somehow, somewhere inside me, you will always be connected to my story. And somewhere you inside of you—’
I start to giggle. ‘You said, somewhere you inside of you—’
‘Is this the dopamine taking over?’ he asks.
‘That’s what the alcohol does,’ I say and pour both of us another drink because all I want right now is to shut down my mind and be with him.
I throw the vodka down my throat. The warmth that follows is comforting, as if a blanket is being draped around my shoulders.
‘Aanchal, if you’re getting drunk to seduce me, you don’t need to. I have always been yours.’
‘I know,’ I say.
He tucks a few stray hairs behind my ear and lets his fingers linger there.
His touch is warm, the pressure of his fingertips sending a tingle down my neck.
He stares at his glass and then slowly tips the entire thing into his mouth.
In a slow, raspy, determined tone, he says, ‘I think I’m ready for you. ’
‘You make it sound like you’re going to operate on me,’ I say and giggle like a schoolgirl and hate that I do that.
‘Isn’t love a bit like that? Pulling yourself apart down to the atom, fusing yourself with the other and seeing how existence pans out?’
‘You always had the flair for dramatic and needlessly confusing metaphors.’
‘Would it be too much of a cliché if I say you bring it out in me?’
‘Keep saying these words to me.’
‘What else would you like to me to say?’ he asks me, his voice dreamy. ‘Like this, right here, sitting next to you, with the possibility of a future together will be one of the greatest things I will ever experience in my life?’
He stretches out his hand for me. I put my hand in his. His grip is strong, and makes me feel loved more deeply than words could ever describe.
‘Take care of me?’ I whisper.
He wraps his arm around me in a tight embrace, as if he is attempting to shield me from the world. I lean into him, and with his touch, a burden is lifted, allowing my soul to finally breathe. As if I have been reborn, I can now live. I close my eyes.
When I open them, I’m in my own bed. I have only a faint memory of lying down on the blanket, holding him. My mind constructs the past: of him picking me up and getting me home.
That’s what I feel with him: like coming home.
11.
Daksh Dey
I arrive at the society gym and spot Gaurav at work with his personal trainer, doing bench presses and screaming like a little boy.
But he has visibly put on more muscle in the couple of weeks since he began his regimen and it’s good to see.
Despite his performance in the gym, he’s all about protein and omega capsules and creatine these days.
I’m proud of him and his recovery. He waves me over when he finishes, signals that he’d only need a few minutes to wrap up.
I wait. He flexes his puny arms for me.
Today, we are going to our favourite eatery: Gupta Rajma Chawal at Connaught Place.
We used to avoid spots like this when Gaurav became Instagram famous.
People would swarm around him asking for selfies, and though he would power through, smiling for them, it tired him out.
But the universe has unfortunately conspired to give us that opportunity now with Gaurav’s following dwindling to nothing.
Of the few times Gaurav and I have been out, no one bothered us.
In times of ten-second attention spans, deleting your YouTube account and deactivating your Instagram account for six months is like going missing for a century.
Countless others swarm and take your place like locusts. It’s like you never existed.
I have felt this first-hand. Since our parenting podcast shut down, listeners moved to other podcasts. The requests to restart our podcast—despite its wide listener base—ebbed with time.
But today, we are going to talk about none of that. I’m going to tell him about Aanchal and me, and our impending trip to Europe. We have submitted our passports under fast tracker premium services and we leave in a week. He wouldn’t mind it, of course, but it’s important that he hears it from me.
We climb into the car. He sits in the driver’s seat. His hands tremble as he fumbles with the key.
‘You never forget how to drive,’ I remind him.
Sweat glistens on his forehead. I can practically hear his heart pounding as he starts up the engine. This is his first time since leaving rehabilitation.
‘Go easy at first,’ I instruct him.
He gives a small nod before shifting into a higher gear.
Within fifteen minutes, Gaurav’s muscle memory kicks in and he drives like he used to. Fast but safe.
‘Don’t forget the indicators,’ I tell him.
‘Didi and you are going to Europe,’ he remarks out of the blue as he shifts into a higher gear.
‘Did she—’
‘I saw the documents on the desktop.’ After a long pause, he adds, ‘You have my blessing, Bhaiya.’
‘Fuck your blessing.’
He laughs softly. ‘Can’t believe I will be your saala.’
‘You have been my saala,’ I remind him.
‘Marry her quickly, don’t want her living in my house any more,’ says Gaurav. ‘Did you ask Rabbani?’
‘She will be pissed, but yes, I will tell her.’
‘Pissed is an understatement,’ corrects Gaurav.