PART 4 #7
It’s only 6 a.m. He must still be in bed.
Is he texting me while he’s wishing I was with him?
What is he thinking about me? Because all I can think about is him slipping his hands inside my T-shirt and pressing himself against me.
I can hear his whispers in my ears asking me if he should brush first and me whispering back that it doesn’t matter.
What’s he doing to himself at 6 a.m. while texting me?
Is it what I think? Can I ask him? What if it’s the answer I’m imagining? Will I ask him to show himself to me?
How does he have this power over me, even after all this time?
It’s as if my body remembers him, misses him, yearns for him.
It’s like his love is a religion I was born into and no matter what I do, he will always have his mark on me.
My atheism against his religion of love is also a kind of love.
I’ve got my friends, my job, but I realize that he, somehow, has always been lodged right in the centre of my heart.
Despite the hurt and the pain, despite the years, he still holds this unbelievable, undeniable place in my life. So here I am, staring at my screen.
I have missed you too.
And then, after not thinking too much, I text him again.
Where are you?
He sends me a live location. I click on the link and it shows a map that I immediately recognize.
The journey from Delhi to Dehradun, which used to be a gruelling nine-hour drive over potholes with a little bit of road thrown in, has now been reduced to a five-hour journey on smoother roads.
This option is much more appealing to me compared to the hassle of waiting in airport queues, waiting for luggage and then catching another taxi to get home.
I call him frantically.
‘Where are you going?’ I ask. ‘I will be there on Tuesday. Why—’
He interrupts me. ‘I’m not going there for you. I’m meeting Aunty.’
My heart jumps because I know what’s he talking about, but it scares me. ‘Whose aunty?’
‘Your mother,’ he says, as if it’s no big deal.
My pulse shoots up. ‘Why are you meeting her?’
‘Because I need to ask her if it’s okay for me to get married to you.’ His voice remains calm.
‘. . . but.’
‘What? You don’t want to get married to me?’
‘You don’t want to get married to me?’ I mimic his tone. ‘That’s the worst proposal in the history of marriage proposals.’
‘I—’
‘No, listen to me, Daksh,’ I say, gathering my guts. ‘This is not the 1980s that you go to my mother, and she just hands me over to you. I don’t want to get married to you.’
‘Of course you do.’
‘I absolutely do not. You and I, it’s . . .’
‘We have the worst luck in the world, but I love you,’ he says as easily as he once did. Like he would say it and it wouldn’t turn my insides into mush. ‘There’s nothing that’s going to change that. If all that’s happened to me, to us, hasn’t changed it, what more can possibly happen?’
‘I don’t love you, Daksh.’
‘You always have,’ he says. ‘There are times we have disliked each other far more than we have loved each other, but we were always in love.’
‘You’re not going to Maa,’ I warn him. ‘She’s still . . .’
And then, I check myself. She’s still what?
Hurt? Does she harbour intense resentment due to what occurred?
The quick answer to that is no. It doesn’t take a therapist to ascertain that.
But what she feels about Daksh is still a throw of the dice.
I don’t want to take a chance on that. I don’t want to undo years of healing over being selfish about wanting to be with him.
I want to be with him.
That’s all I really want.
How utterly predictable, trite, boring, unoriginal of me. After seeing the world, jumping professions and cities, navigating trauma, knowing both poverty and money, this is what I end up with.
‘Don’t go,’ I warn him. ‘I will tell her when I think it’s okay. You’re doing this without my consent.’
‘Don’t throw that word around just like that,’ he mocks. ‘I’m meeting her because I love her and I need to mend that relationship too.’
‘Daksh—’
‘You’re breaking up.’
‘I’m not,’ I protest.
‘I can’t hear you, Aanchal.’
‘YOU. CAN.’
Click.
8.
Daksh Dey
The highway to Dehradun stretches before us. The road is new and yet the asphalt is melting in places and the car bumps over them. I grip the steering wheel, my knuckles white.
‘Relax, Dada. The steering wheel isn’t your enemy,’ Rabbani says, her eyes glued to her phone screen, scrolling through her social media feed, her thumb moving with the speed and precision of a concert pianist.
‘I’m doing nothing.’
‘Pretty cool in faking your confidence in front of Aanchal though, Dada,’ she says.
‘I wasn’t faking it,’ I lie.
‘You were pretty nervous.’
‘I’m not nervous, just . . . pensive,’ I say.
‘Sounds like another word for nervous to me.’
Every time she has a quip ready for me, I feel a pang—of missing the old Rabbani, the little baby who used to spend hours nestled in my lap, who would invariably crawl towards my feet no matter where I was in the house, who used to bawl out every time I didn’t let her poke her eye out with a fork, with whom I coloured countless sheets of paper in bustling restaurants, tied her shoelaces, ironed her clothes, whom I taught to read and write, to whom I explained what photosynthesis was and how to spell it, and for whom I traced the Indian rivers on the map, taught how to use log tables, stood outside her exam centres and tried to ascertain if her results were making her nervous.
Where does time go? Why are the days so long and the years so short?
I was nineteen, and it’s been fourteen years, but the years don’t make sense to me.
It doesn’t feel like I have lived eighteen years and yet, here she is, sitting next to me, an eighteen-year-old herself.
‘You’ve grown up, Rabbani,’ I mumble.
She rolls her eyes. ‘Dada, you’re so dramatic, so extra.’
‘For a few things in life, you should be extra. Your generation will grow up not feeling anything for anything. Everything is basic.’
She chuckles. ‘Your generation. You sound forty now.’ And then her voice grows soft. ‘Dada, you are a bit extra about everything. But I’m proud of you for doing this.’
‘Says the girl who had ripped up that passport.’
‘I was a child!’ she protests.
‘You’re still a child.’
‘I think . . . I think Aanchal is good for you,’ she says.
‘You’ve come a long way from hating her.’
Rabbani gave me a quick glance, her face breaking into a grin. ‘She’s still annoying. Too haughty about her intelligence and her beauty or whatever. But you . . . you seem less
miserable with her around. And I guess I want you to be happy.’
I nod. We enter the town that no longer looks like the idyllic hill station straight out of children’s story books.
It’s now a dusty, busy half-city, half-town stuck in an identity crisis.
Aanchal’s house is on the outskirts of Clement Town, where the narrow lanes are also home to packs of stray dogs and cows.
As we count the numbers down to her address, a knot of anxiety begins to form in my stomach.
I can see her mother in the front yard, her face behind a plant she’s watering.
‘You can do this, Dada,’ Rabbani says. ‘Just be yourself. Which is, sickeningly sweet. Always remember, no aunties have ever hated you.’
‘Except the ones whose sons I killed.’
Rabbani throws me a murderous look. ‘Don’t self-sabotage.’
‘I’ll try my best, Rabbu.’
We switch off the engine and I sit there for a bit, trying to form the words in my head into sentences. I hear Rabbani take a deep breath.
‘Do well, Dada,’ she says. ‘It’s literally killing me to leave you alone and, you know, do my thing.’
‘Now who’s being extra?’
She scoffs, rolling her eyes, but the soft smile on her lips and the little wetness in her eyes betray her. ‘I will always hate Aanchal, Dada . . . because you love her so much.’
‘Not more than I love you, Rabbu.’
‘There’s a hierarchy?’
‘Yes, there is.’
‘Then I’m okay,’ she says and bursts out laughing. When she stops, she reaches across and flings open the driver’s door. ‘Now, do this.’
As I step out on to the pavement, I feel the weight of my past and the possibility of my future pressing down on me.
Rabbani steps out of the car, her voice drifting over to me on the warm breeze. ‘And Dada?’
I turn to look at her, my hand on the gate of Aanchal’s house.
‘Dada is the best. Dada is amazing.’
9.
Aanchal Madan
Sometimes, when I’m at an airport counter, the person checking me in asks, ‘Where are you going to?’ and I find myself disoriented, not knowing which city I came from, or where I’m going to.
In the past three weeks, I have been to thirty-two colleges in nineteen cities as a part of the organization’s team.
The work’s rewarding, but it’s taking everything out of me—emotionally and physically.
All the new therapists in the organization had been warned against compassion fatigue, which a lot of overworked therapists feel.
There is so much chronic stress and pain around you, that you feel numb to it.
I’m not numb yet. I can feel everything.
And for now, I enjoy helping make a difference.
In our group, there’s a running joke we ask each other, ‘Can you still feel things?’ And I do a quick mental check. I do, I do feel something.
After I get my boarding pass, I navigate through the labyrinth of Mumbai Airport, feeling a mix of excitement and apprehension.
My destination is Manipur, a place where the air smells of damp earth and rain, which has the coolest students I have ever met.
I have been there twice before and both times I extended my trip.
My phone buzzes. It’s Maa, her name shining brightly on my screen. I swipe to answer, nestling the phone between my shoulder and ear, ‘Hello, Maa.’
‘Did you eat something?’ Her voice is stern.
‘I had a parantha, Maa. There’s a corporate meal on board as well.’