In the first year of SRCC, Vicky and I were in the worst phase of our lives. We couldn’t talk for a minute without it devolving into a screaming match. All that was left was resentment and hate. When the first-year results were announced, Vicky was nineteenth in his class, I was twenty-second in mine. This was not the future we’d seen for ourselves.
‘You should break up with him,’ Vanita had advised. ‘Does he even want you?’
It was a question that haunted me. So, I went and told Vicky I wanted out. I got the answer swiftly. He slapped me and then broke down in tears immediately. He sobbed and told me that if the relationship didn’t mean the world to him, he wouldn’t be begging and crying. He said that the only person who mattered was me. He loved me so much that it made him angry, vindictive, broken. Without me, he would walk into the traffic, take a knife to his wrists, jump into a canal.
I believed him. Every word of it.
‘There’s so much history, Aanchal,’ he had fallen at my feet and sobbed. ‘We’ve been through so much together. I can’t just let it go. You can’t walk away just because it’s become tough. We both got caught up. We both made mistakes. We should try again. I really want us to try again.’
I believed every damned word he said in his hurt, quivering voice.
‘We can’t let this go to waste,’ I told him in tears. ‘We’ve given it so much. Will we let our colleges come between us?’
‘I will be better,’ he promised.
I took it to be the gospel truth, the word of God, etched in stone.
We started to rebuild our relationship.
We spent more time together. We began studying together again. Our scores improved. After college, we would go on long walks and recalibrate our thoughts about our future. He asked me to reconsider the CAT and start thinking about the UPSC. We were spending hours at coffee shops watching TV serials, finding empty movie halls where we would touch each other and sitting around on college lawns completing assignments. And every Friday afternoon, his friends and mine would organize a house party and get drunk. Despite Vanita not liking any of his friends, even she would hang out with Vicky and his gang.
Vanita admitted she was impressed we could find it in ourselves to love each other again.
I would say Vanita even started hating Vicky a little less.
And just when things seemed to settle, at one Friday house party, Vicky’s best friend, Sanjog, tried to slip his hand into Vanita’s dress and caress her breasts.
Vanita pushed his hand away.
But he became more aggressive and tore a part of her top. Vanita shattered his nose with a swift uppercut. She then asked a bleeding Sanjog to apologize. Sanjog claimed a drunk Vanita had come on to him.
‘You think I would touch an ugly girl like her?!’ Sanjog had screamed like a rabid dog.
‘You’re dead,’ Vanita had answered in the coldest tone I had ever heard from anyone.
Half an hour later, at a police station, a constable and Vanita’s mom slapped Sanjog in quick succession. Sanjog was made to strip down to his boxers and apologize to Vanita. Vanita’s mother clicked pictures and warned Sanjog that if she heard anything more about him, she would paste posters of him all over the university.
‘CHOOSE HER OR ME!’ Vicky had screamed at me the next day in full view of his friends, including Sanjog. Vicky’s hand squeezed mine. ‘HE’S MY BROTHER! DO YOU KNOW WHAT HE HAS DONE FOR ME?’
‘But Vicky—’
Vicky ground his teeth and spoke through a clenched jaw. ‘Vanita is a slut, everyone knows that. Thatrandi(prostitute) was drunk. We have all seen her grind with random men in clubs,’ he seethed. ‘Just because her parents have contacts in the police, she got away with this.’
‘She was not the one—’
‘You also know what kind of girl she is. You will also end up being a randilike her! Mark my words,’ he barked, his face inches from mine.
‘Let’s go, bhai,’ growled Sanjog and pulled at Vicky’s arm.
Sanjog looked at me with spiteful eyes. He stepped close to me. I could smell alcohol on his breath.
‘Vanita will pay for her mistake,’ he said. ‘One rod, a bottle of acid, two men on a motorcycle with their faces masked, that’s all it takes. Tell that to your friend. She can suck all the dicks she wants once she’s strapped to a hospital bed.’
Sanjog didn’t know that Vanita wasn’t talking to me. She wouldn’t talk to me till the time I broke up with Vicky.
‘Why are you asking me to break up with Vicky?’ I argued with Vanita. ‘It’s not Vicky, it’s Sanjog. Vicky’s just standing up for his friend!’
‘Why is it even a choice?! Are you even listening to yourself?’ Vanita had screamed at me in tears.
