I begged Vicky to talk to me.
‘Oye behen ki laudi, we are over,’ he would say to me. ‘If you’re talking to Vanita still, then go to hell. You and your liar friend can go fuck whoever you want to. Go, get fucked by the entire college, but don’t you dare call me!’
‘Why would she lie?’
‘Why would Sanjog lie? Why would he even want to touch the small, black, raisin-like breasts of your friend? My dick’s fairer than her face!’
Both Vanita and Vicky distanced themselves from me.
Vanita wouldn’t even sit in my line of sight. I would spend hours outside Vicky’s college, waiting for him. I naïvely believed that if only he would talk to me, I could set things right. I was blocked, cast away. I spent a month crying, waiting, hoping things would go back to the way they were before. My loneliness consumed me.
That was when I slipped.
I found Rajat, a fourth-year student from IIT Delhi, on a dating app. I didn’t even know if he was funny, considerate or nice. But I know that he was present. I know that he listened. In those days, that was kindness enough. I repaid his kindness by going to his hostel, walking down that corridor with multiple pairs of eyes staring at me, and then getting naked with him on his reeking bedsheet, bottles of Blender’s Pride rolling about the foot of the bed.
I allowed him to fuck me.
Over the next few weeks, Rajat helped me tide over the storm of sadness Vicky and Vanita had pushed me through. He introduced me to shots of Old Monk chased down by small gulps of orange juice, Maggi cooked over steam irons, and learning to ignore the leery cheers of his friends outside. I would spend multiple afternoons drunk and hungover, watching him and his friends pass around a foul-smelling joint.
‘You need to let Vicky go,’ he told me one day. ‘Vanita seems to be a nice person.’
‘Leave him and move in here? Make a little tent with your unwashed bedsheet and stay here?’
‘You deserve someone much better than me. Literally, the entire hostel is wondering which animal I sacrificed to make you decide to be here with me,’ Rajat replied with a chuckle. ‘I am not a fool to think that this is anything more than your rebound relationship. I’m not stupid. But I also know that Vicky doesn’t have a place in your life. You should tell him it’s over.’
There are times I wonder what would have happened if I had listened to Rajat, found the courage and told Vicky that it was over from my side as well.
If only . . .
But before I could make up my mind, Vicky saw me with Rajat at Safdarjung Market and all hell broke loose. Vicky, Sanjog and his friends came at Rajat with bricks, belts and rods. Even with three hairline fractures and being surrounded by six angry men, Rajat maintained that he was just a friend. Not even a friend, he insisted, more like a brother. But the damage was done.
That day, I gave Vicky the right to call me randi, whore, kuttiya all my life.
* * *
Outside, I hear the corridors of the Marriott fall silent. Everyone’s left for the party. I blink away my tears. A familiar feeling of wanting to hurt Vicky crops up in my heart. I put my phone on airplane mode. I let Vicky and Vicky’s mother believe that I defied them and went to the party. This is what my life’s reduced to—these games. Hoping for hate.
6.
Daksh Dey
‘If the building crumbles down someday, it will be because of the weight of your books,’ warns Jagath, my neighbour and best friend, seeing me keepThe Stalkeron the top of the tall stack of books in the corner of the room.
‘Give some of them away. It’s not like you will ever read them again,’ he repeats.
‘He would rather die,’ remarks Zeenath, my other neighbour and other best friend. She recognizes her mistake immediately. She mumbles, ‘Sorry.’
Mortality is a topic that we tread lightly on in our house. As if on cue, Baba groans in the background. The scarred stump of his amputated leg juts out from beneath the blanket. I’m about to get up, but Jagath is quicker. He pulls the blanket over what remains of Baba’s leg.
‘Keep sleeping, Uncle,’ he says to Baba, who groans some more and goes back to sleep.
* * *
‘You’re very lucky we could save your knee,’ the doctor at Dubai Prime Hospital had told Baba. ‘That’s quite fortunate.’
‘Why just lucky, doctor?’ Baba mocked the doctor. ‘Am I not the luckiest man in the world? Why don’t you exchange places with me? Come, come, you lie down in this bed, let me cut off one leg of yours, then I will tell you what happened to your family. Come . . .’
The doctor tried to calm him down. ‘I understand what you have gone through, Mr Dey. What I’m trying to say is that the prosthetics will be . . .’
