Shattered, I nursed my ego thinking about Aanchal, staring at her phone number. Aanchal reminded me that what I had for Sameeksha couldn’t be love—since my crush on Aanchal was so much stronger than what I felt for Sameeksha. I wanted to call Aanchal. But I couldn’t have called her. If I did, I would have to tell her that thoughts of her had completely invaded my mind. I would have to tell her that I had started daydreaming about her like a fucking schoolkid.
And so, I waited for my stupid crush on her to weaken.
Then one day, I got a notification that she had just made a social-media account. It was locked, she used just her first name, and in the display picture, she was with a guy.Vicky.I wanted to, but didn’t send her a request because a) what did I expect would happen and b) what would she tell Vicky, the possessive guy in her display picture, about me?
However, despite choosing not to add her, every now and then over the course of a year, I would search for her profile using her number, see if her display picture was still the same, zoom in on her and feel my heart brim with awe, joy and jealousy.
Till the day she deleted her profile.
Three years ago, when my life turned to shit, her number changed from being a source of joy and daydreams to being an escape.
On the darkest of nights, when giving up seemed to be the only option, I would look at her number. I would imagine dialling it. I would imagine her picking up the phone and telling me that she had been waiting for my call.
Two years ago, I sat down to delete the phone numbers of friends, relatives and acquaintances from my contact list. People who had abandoned us. Industrial-grade assholes, every last one of them. I kept scrolling and deleting. With angry, trembling fingers, I deleted Ashish Uncle, Baba’s colleague—he stopped taking my calls. Athavale Uncle, our neighbour, who told us they were under financial pressure and couldn’t loan us any money. I deleted Atul Uncle, that bastard to whom Baba had loaned money multiple times, whose extended family had stayed with us for a month a few years ago.
My fingers had hovered over Aanchal’s number. I didn’t delete it.
When we moved to Mumbai, it coincided with her creating a new LinkedIn account. The display picture came first: a white shirt, chin high, success and determination in her eyes. Then came the details.
Aanchal Madan, third-year student, SRCC
Aanchal Madan won the inter-collegiate debate competition
Summer intern at Coca-Cola
Last year, she added another bullet point.
Aanchal Madan joins DeliverFood
The girl who had nothing, wanted everything and got everything.
On the lowest of days, I would find her on LinkedIn and tell myself that I couldn’t allow destiny to define my life. That I could fight, just as she did. She was a flicker of hope, of light.
So do I remember her number? Yes, I do. If they rip open my heart, they will find the numbers floating in it like little cereal alphabets float in Rabbani’s milk every morning.
‘My number is 4049494979,’ she says.
I fake-type it on my phone.
She smiles. ‘I will wait. This time I hope you do call.’
She waves me goodbye, turns and joins the stream of people leaving Starbucks. A few men notice her as she waltzes past. They all turn to look at her.
5.
Aanchal Madan
I can’t concentrate on what the panellists are saying about customer lifecycle and brand architecture. My mind wanders off towards Daksh. I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw him at the coffee shop. I was only looking in his direction because he stood out. While others were hunched over and buried in their phones, he stood upright, his head slightly bent, lost in his book. In a sea of men and women in light shirts and stuffy trousers, he was an island in a black T-shirt, a pair of black jeans and dirty white sneakers. Unlike others, there was no sense of urgency in his movements, no looking over his shoulders to see how far the line had moved.
My heart jumped when I looked closely.
Daksh!
My lucky charm.
Waves of memories crash over me. The guy whose Nintendo Gaurav had stolen. The one who took my number and never called. The one who checked my board results on his phone. The one with whom I had shared a Cornetto, the first person I lied to Vicky about. He had grown up, now a guy with deep eyes, a sharper nose, rougher skin, the calmness of someone . . . I don’t want to say wiser because that’s old, but he is . . . mature? Quieter? I can’t place it. But I know exactly what he made me feel. Comfortable.
That has remained the same, though.
