PART 4 #5
‘Stopping just there? None of the other stuff you usually say? That we should talk, you would support me, all that sentimental bullshit.’
When Gaurav’s life ended tragically, we turned our fury towards Daksh. It wasn’t totally misplaced. After all, he had lured Gaurav into gaming in the first place. Then years later, he assured us of his recovery post-rehab and returned the social media keys that led to Gaurav’s relapse.
After we knew who to blame, Daksh, Papa brutally assaulted him, and Maa and I joined in with words.
Despite the torment, Daksh bore our wrath and his own grief with unwavering grace.
It only made us angrier. Our hatred fuelled our healing journey.
We had so much grief, we had to put it somewhere, and we put it into hating him.
For months, he offered help through his own pain.
He loved us despite our hatred, which we harboured intensely.
Our grief morphed us into merciless monsters.
He was the villain of our story. Daksh endured, his grace and apologies only made us curse him more.
We craved his defiance, we hoped he would fight back, but every time he came in front of us, his eyes were downcast, defeated, crumpled in his own sadness.
Hating him, blaming him, healed us a little.
By the time we were done with him, we were a little ashamed of how badly we had treated him.
But from that point, there was no coming back.
Daksh had no place in our lives. He was a reminder of the darkest period of our lives.
His presence only meant death and pain. He was the worst part of our lives.
Ultimately, we sold the apartment, left the city and moved away from where Gaurav had died.
‘I don’t know,’ he says, frustration evident in his voice. ‘I just want to make things right between us.’
‘After all that we said to you, why are you still here? Sitting in front of me?’
He looks at me, catches my gaze and then doesn’t answer the question. We eat in silence for the rest of the meal, both lost in our own thoughts. As we finish, Daksh looks at me. When the waiter comes back, we order a plate of momos to keep sitting there.
‘What else is there to do if not wait for you, Aanchal?’ he says. ‘Nothing.’
6.
Daksh Dey
As Aanchal and I walk out of Dragon Hut, the desperation of my last comment still hanging thick in the air, we are greeted by a warm, sticky Delhi night.
Eager families rush past us to claim our table.
As we stroll towards the parking lot, my eyes keep darting towards Aanchal.
The soft yellow of the street light dances on her skin and casts shadows of her laugh lines and delicate wrinkles.
Her hair is now thinner but still frames her face beautifully, and her narrower eyes seem to hold the wisdom of someone older than she is.
Yet, as I think this, I recognize that labelling someone as having ‘aged gracefully’ can be iffy because it implies there’s a wrong way to age.
For instance, Baba has aged gracefully, hopping around spritely on one leg, while others have grown fat and unsightly.
Viewing Aanchal this way insinuates that other people in their thirties are ageing worse than she is, as if she stands above them in a hierarchy.
But then again, when has that not been true?
She catches my eye, her eyes sparkling. At once, I can sense the sadness, yearning and longing between us, but for now, we’re here together. That’s all that matters.
Maybe.
She smiles at me, for the first time this evening. I don’t want to belittle her, so I keep my thoughts to myself: her patients’ problems could be swiftly remedied if she simply smiled at them. After all, her smile has just sent a wave of happiness through me.
I have gotten over all the misbehaviour from Aanchal, her father’s beatings and Aunty’s curses after Gaurav’s death.
Most of it was warranted; I deserved it for failing Gaurav.
To be honest, it purged me of a part of the guilt I felt.
I embraced the punishment. And now that it’s been some time, I can look at Aanchal and feel other things than just that fucking guilt of letting my best friend down.
Aanchal doesn’t call for a cab.
‘Who would have thought that one day my mind would make a strong connection between Chinese food and acidity?’ I say.
She smiles. ‘I was about to suggest ice cream, Daksh.’
‘Cup or cone?’
‘I changed my mind.’
‘Now that doesn’t happen often, does it?’ I remark. ‘What do you want? Paan?’
She points at a wine and beer shop on the other side of the road. ‘That.’
‘Hoegaarden? Budweiser?’
‘What are we? Seventeen? Hoegaarden.’
‘That’s me.’
‘A motorcycle?’ she asks.
‘Or, as Rabbani says, an attempt to cling to my youth.’
‘We can’t have beers then,’ she says.
‘Look at you, changing your mind twice in ten minutes,’ I say. ‘We have to get a helmet.’
‘We always have to get a helmet.’
Ten minutes later, Aanchal has picked up a 300-rupee helmet, and we grab a bottle of Absolut and Diet Coke from the shop. We pour out half the bottle of Coke and replace it with vodka.
‘We are drinking to forget?’ I ask her.
‘Absolutely.’
The concoction burns my throat as I drink it, while Aanchal seems unfazed, drinking as if it’s water.
‘Are you an alcoholic now?’ I ask her.
‘I have destroyed my taste buds by burning them with so much hot coffee over the years that I can’t taste anything now.’
‘I don’t think the science adds up.’
She looks at me. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not Gaurav. I just don’t need to be sad with you.’
‘Good to know I make you sad.’
‘You make me more angry than sad,’ she says, heading for the pillion.
‘Are we being reckless enough to ride drunk?’
‘When have we ever not been reckless, Daksh?’ she asks, her eyes glinting with mischief, regret and sadness. ‘It’s always been like that.’
I mount the rider’s seat and fasten my helmet.
She secures the bottle between us and wraps her arms around me.
The warmth of the alcohol courses through my veins.
With no specific destination in mind, I rev the motorcycle and plunge headlong into the traffic.
She presses herself against me, making my heart pound.
My mind wrestles with her sudden reappearance in my life, but it has happened so many times that my surprise is the only surprising thing about it.
We ride in silence, only breaking it to drink from the Coke bottle.
Ever so often, I steal a glance at her in the mirror.
Our eyes lock. We both know that we are tipsy, teetering on the edge of being drunk.
‘We are drinking to forget,’ she whispers into my ear.
She hands me the bottle, then reclaims it, stray droplets cascading down her neck.
I navigate towards the under-construction Dwarka sectors, aware of the growing buzz and unsteadiness of my drive.
We are done with the bottle. She hurls it away, watching it land neatly in a dustbin.
She looks at me, smiling for the first time this evening, ‘Did you see it?’
‘I did,’ I respond.
She leans in and holds me tightly, igniting every fibre of my being.
‘I’ve missed you,’ she whispers into my ear, her lips grazing it.
I slow down my motorcycle to hear her better, to sear the memory of her saying it into my soul.
‘I have hated you so much,’ she says, her voice a long drawl. ‘So, so much. You smothered us with so much love, it was suffocating.’
I couldn’t grasp it then, but I do now. I assumed that love, attention and time would heal everything.
I treated the Madans the same way I treated Rabbani after Mumma’s death.
With Rabbani, I pretended life would go on, that these things happen, and so we should just forge ahead.
The only problem was that Rabbani was four; these guys were adults.
I failed to acknowledge the crushing pain everyone was experiencing and the need to grieve however they felt necessary.
Over the years, I’ve come to understand why the Madans despised me.
It wasn’t solely because I drove Gaurav to suicide—which I did—but also because I never allowed anyone, including myself, to grieve properly.
I thought I was being patient, but it was the opposite.
I wanted everyone to deal with their emotions as quickly as possible.
Partly so that I could stop feeling so fucking guilty about it.
‘You were not to be blamed,’ she says.
But of course, I was to be blamed. I’d failed my one true friend.
‘I know, Aanchal,’ I lie.
I stop the motorcycle at the side of the road. She clambers off, her footing unsteady. There’s dust and asbestos hanging in the air from the under-construction buildings around us. We are both slurring our words.
‘I have started to look for people to marry,’ she says in a flat tone. The words are jagged enough to shred my heart. ‘. . . because I want kids.’
‘You hate kids.’
She chuckles sadly. ‘Desperate times, desperate measures. It will be an entirely selfish operation. I will have kids because I want to feel purpose. How messed up is that?’
‘Right up your alley.’
‘Sometimes I imagine these fictional kids growing, being twenty, thirty, forty, and still asking me for pocket money because . . . why not? Why should they work and pay for a life that they didn’t ask for?’
‘Don’t have a kid,’ I advise her while envy pricks my heart.
After all these years, she decides to create a mini version of herself but without me. Fucking bullshit.
‘Embrace the boredom, like I have. It’s going to come, sooner or later. That’s what my podcast listeners tell me. Old and boring. So just be that.’
‘We are driving around drunk, and you’re saying we are boring?’
‘That’s just us being stupid and dealing with our loss in unhealthy ways.’
‘The loss of my brother.’
‘The loss of my mother.’
‘The loss of our love.’
‘The loss of our future.’