He smiled at me and talked to me with the same politeness and grace that I’d found so charming all those years ago.
Daksh was eighteen when I first met him. At the time, I thought everyone in college spoke with the humility and openness that he did. Four years have passed, I have talked to countless people, and none of their conversations are etched in my mind like his are. I still remember how he made me feel during those conversations.
Today, after all those years, he reminded me of that feeling of being seen, of being important. Of what it’s like to have an audience of one and yet feel as if an army of people are hanging on to your every word. Once again, he made me feel as though everything I said should be carved in stone. I could have read a grocery list and he would have still listened to it intently.
Though this time, an air of heaviness clung to him.
Throughout the day, I keep looking at my phone, hoping he would text or call. That, too, hasn’t changed about him. He made me wait then, too. As the day progresses, I push thoughts of him away. Maybe this is what guys as charming and handsome as Daksh do—make girls feel like they are the centre of their universe and then leave them just like that.
At the end of day one of the conference, the organizers tell us they are throwing a party for all participants at Opa, a bar a few kilometres away. When I tell Maa–Papa about it, they beg me to take permission from Vicky’s mother.
‘I’m not going then. I would rather wrestle a snake than take her permission,’ I tell them, which is an apt analogy, but she’s the one Vicky has wrapped around my neck to slowly wring the life out of me.
‘Why do you say these things, beta?’ asks Maa, horrified.
So, I sit in my room and try to ignore the chatter outside in the corridors of people leaving for the party. An hour later, I bite the bullet and call thekutti.
‘Mummy, can I please go?’ I ask Vicky’s mother in a coy tone.
The disgusting woman grumbles over the phone. I picture a frothing bulldog. ‘Did Vicky ask you to take my permission? If he has, then my answer is no.’
‘He’s not picking up, Mummy. He has a review meeting till late tonight. But I have dropped him a message. He has not replied but I thought I’d ask you.’
‘When did you text him?’
‘An hour ago.’
‘Vicky messaged me fifteen minutes ago. If he was okay with you going, he would have told me. And beta, you know he doesn’t like all this. Why do you want to go? All the people will do there is drink. You shouldn’t go,’ she says with a sense of finality.
‘Mummy, I won’t drink—’
She interrupts me rudely. ‘Beti, I told you what we wish, the rest is up to you,’ she says sharply. ‘Don’t ask us if you don’t want to listen.’
I know if I push her, she will twist it and use it against me.
‘Okay, I’m sleepy anyway, Mummy. I will go and sleep instead.’
‘Good girl.’
Angry tears spring up in my eyes.
I’m angry with Vicky, his mother and, most of all, with myself.
I wrote my death sentence the day I started cheating on Vicky. The day I walked into Rajat Bopanna’s IIT Delhi hostel for the first time and let him do whatever he wanted with me. After my first time with Rajat, he whispered his questions as he planted kisses on my neck.
‘Why are we doing this? Aren’t you happy with Vicky?’
‘Each one of your kisses is like a tiny revenge for every time Vicky has made me cry.’
‘Does he still make you cry?’
‘I cry, but the tears are fake.’
My tears had dried, my spirit was dead, long before Rajat. He walked into my life with a different purpose. It made me realize I didn’t want love from Vicky but cleansing, revenge and distance.
Vicky and I were unfixable.
We had tried to fix our relationship multiple times. Naïvely, we thought that with enough love and affection, it could be fixed.
