Richa shouted from the balcony, ‘Did you meet her?’
I waved my middle finger at her and what I assume was a celebratory look because of my break-up on her face. I have seen my seniors do that. Richa would have seen that too because she disappeared into her house.
It was late in the evening when Baba came home with an opened envelope addressed to me. It was without any stamps.
‘Has the girl still not left you?’ asked Maa.
‘I have nothing to do with her.’
‘You don’t?’ said Baba, mockingly. ‘Then what should I do with this card?’
‘Burn it,’ I said.
Maa–Baba would have sensed the seriousness in my tone because they left the card on the table. Boudi picked it up.
‘Why are the hearts cut out? Seems more like a break-up card,’ she asked.
‘I don’t know,’ I said and took the card from her.
Now as I’m looking at it the writing is Richa’s, not Brahmi’s. She seemed to have been heartbroken about me abusing her, or seeing Brahmi again. If only she would have known that there’s nothing left between Brahmi and me.
21 February 2000
Boudi’s heavily pregnant but with Maa–Baba fussing over her every little discomfort, it gives Dada a lot of time on his hands.
My retreat from the world of friends and frolic and going out has not been taken lightly by Dada. Apparently, Brahmi had reached out to Arundhati, Sahil and Rishab to involve me, talk to me, and make sure I was fine. It hadn’t ended well for anyone. A couple of days ago, all three of them had landed at my place unannounced. I had only briefly recovered from a depressing bout of reminiscing about Brahmi so the last thing I had wanted was to see them—my last surviving tether to her. What really angered me on seeing them was that she could call them but not me!
I told them I didn’t want to see them. They tried cracking stupid jokes, and suggest stupider things for me to do with them. Tired of their antics, I left the house and they came running after me.
Thrice I warned them to leave me alone, and yet they persisted. In my defence, I warned them suitably, so I am not solely responsible for what happened next. Rishab held my hand to stop me from walking away, and I wrested myself free, picked up a stone and swung it at him. He staggered back in shock and put his hand on his forehead. It came back red. Arundhati and Sahil shouted at me together. While Arundhati ran to tend to her boyfriend, Sahil charged at me, and received the same treatment. I got him in his ear and he fell down smack on the ground.
Arundhati shouted, ‘You are mental! So is your girlfriend! YOU BOTH ARE CRAZY.’
I dropped the stone. ‘She’s not my anything,’ I had said and walked away.
Maa–Baba and Dada–Boudi had heard of what I had done and Dada had been the entrusted with the responsibility of bringing me back to real life. Numerous times I have thought of telling him the truth about Maa–Baba, of my almost-firm plan of ending my life, but the thought of Meenakshi (possibly) has kept me from it. Dada has taken the task quite seriously. It started with him taking me to gaming arcades, which distracted me for a maximum of a couple of minutes.
‘You know how you will heal?’ he had said. ‘By going everywhere you have been with her.’
‘Sounds like the worst plan of all time.’
‘You didn’t let me complete. We will go and make better memories.’
‘It keeps getting worse.’
I tried it just to make Dada stop talking and get busy thinking his idea was working. A short visit to Keventer’s made me so depressed that the plan was aborted like many others that followed.
‘I miss my old brother,’ he often said.
‘I miss everything about the old times, Dada. But that’s not going to change anything, is it?’
‘God, why are you so depressing?’
I wish I could tell him.
He took another line of approach—just dragging me along to wherever he went. He let me in on a big, happy secret after a lot of gushing and beating around the bush.
‘I’m thinking of buying a new flat,’ he said. ‘Maa has been asking Zubeida and me to shift to their flat what with the kid coming. But you know how small that flat is, so I was thinking, why not shift to a bigger flat? I told Maa today I am moving into their flat.’
