‘I’m not your best friend, Gaurav.’
‘C’mon! Jagath and Zeenath?’ he argues. ‘You can’t be friends with married people! They keep telling you the same stories. They are boring as fuck.’
‘Take thatkurtaoff, I’m wearing that to thesangeet. You’re wearing something else. ’
I had picked for Gaurav the blackkurta-pyjamahe’s wearing at the moment. We take showers, blast hot air into our hair, pat them down with wax, shave and are ready in fifteen. Gaurav’s pleading all this while to drink.
‘Only three drinks,’ I allow him, just to make him shut up.
At his third Absolut-Red Bull, he gets chatty, irritating, and I’m already regretting my decision to allow him to drink.
‘Why are you staying? What’s the real reason to stay?’ he asks with a stupid smile that I want to smack off his face.
Just then, the bell rings. Aditya’s guy friends come streaming in, drunk, loud and full of hugs and energy. I realize I’m not drunk enough for this. For this wedding, for this happiness, for facing Aanchal. Big fans, they tell Gaurav effusively. Gaurav, who’s now happy-tipsy, hugs them warmly and accepts their invitation to play FIFA after the sangeet ends. Then one guy asks, ‘Hey? Do you want to join in the dance performance?’
Gaurav turns to me to ask. ‘Should we?’
‘Is her friend dancing? The one from Delhi, the good-looking one?’ I ask Aditya’s friends.
‘Aanchal!’ two of them squeal. ‘She is!’
I see that she still has the same effect on men as she
used to.
‘Then we’ve got to beat them, don’t we?’ I tell them. ‘Do we have enough alcohol?’
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 Jägermeister, 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’. 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 Aditya has had the last drink of the evening. After one final shot of Jägermeister 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. I look 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 spot her at a distance.
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 shimmers with gold. She looks better than I had imagined she would when I packed it in the suitcases. 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 shimmeringcholiin place. Emotions of anger mix with a strange want in me. What was I thinking? That I could be with her? So what if I could love her like no one else could? 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.
We walk towards the bar.
For years, I’ve been tormenting myself with daydreams of Aanchal and me getting married. In my mind, we’ve been through it all—the grand weddings in different destinations, the littlevarmalagames, 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’ve imagined taking her hand and promising to be with her forever, again and again, in this life and the next.
But now, seeing her like this, it’s tearing me apart.
Our eyes meet, and all my anger melts away, replaced by a rush of love that I know will never be reciprocated. Loving Aanchal is like stabbing myself in the heart, over and over. It’s a constant act of self-inflicting pain. Like in a cheap Bollywood flick, I want to grab her hand, take her to themandap, drop a flaming lighter into thehavankund,stride through the seven pheras, then take her to the wedding suite and take her.
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. ‘You stayed back?’
‘Is it difficult for you to imagine that someone sticks 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.’
