‘You’re not serious!’
‘It’s nothing to be happy about,’ she retorts. ‘My parents and Gaurav haven’t talked in seven months. It’s just so stressful. And if he doesn’t report back to college, he will waste three years. He’s going to be a twelfth pass all his life.’
‘I remember he was incredible at it, a lot of potential,’ I say. ‘I think he will do very well. He was a natural.’
She glowers at me. ‘It’s stupid. He’s throwing his life away. The least he could have done is finished his degree. That’s literally just one year.’
‘And lose out on a year of competing? In gaming terms, that’s suicide. You need to be young to compete. Your reflexes get duller as you grow older.’
‘What will he do when’s forty? Keep playing games?’
Aanchal sounds like an old person now. I want to tell her that even her job at DeliverFood will look very different when she’s forty. She will be replaced by AI, the delivery executive by the next version of drones.
‘All he needs to do is win one major tournament. He playsDotA, right? The prize money is in millions. EvenFortniteorCounter-Strike. He can chill or pivot or be a tester. Options are plenty.’
She doesn’t look convinced. ‘You sound exactly like him,’ she grumbles.
‘I’m guessing you will meet him and pester him to go back?’
‘My friend will,’ she answers. ‘He doesn’t talk to me any more. Just to a friend of mine. He has a crush on her so she’s going to try and knock some sense into him.’
‘Honey trapping your own brother, nice,’ I say. ‘It’s your brother, but my suggestion is to let him do what he wants to do. He’s not stupid that he took a decision that big. That itself should tell you about his seriousness.’
‘Woh gadha hai,’ she says. ‘Anyway. I don’t want to talk about it. Even at home, we talk about him most of the time. Tell me about you. Apart from . . . you’re not dating?’
I wonder if I should tell her about the daydreams I have had about our dates.
‘I have tried,’ I answer. ‘But when I tell someone the full extent of my history, trauma, quirks, they run away. As they should.’
‘You’re handsome enough for that not to matter.’
He turns to look at me. There’s surprise on his face.
‘Wait . . . are you . . . is this the first time . . . are you . . . are you flirting with me? Is this the first time Aanchal Madan is flirting with me?’
‘You’re not naïve, you know I have flirted with you before,’ she says. She blinks, and her eyelashes come down in a dramatic wave. ‘If sitting behind you on a scooter and sharing an ice cream cone with you isn’t flirting, I don’t know what is.’
‘Good to know I wasn’t imagining it. Oh, by the way, you look . . . I am just going to repeat myself. But you look like a movie star. Like an empress who has taken a night off royal duties to hang out with the common people.’
‘You say all these things, Daksh, and then go missing for four years.’
‘As opposed to what? Being in touch and watching you with someone else? No, thank you.’
She smiles and sips her tea.
Today, she is in a black-and-gold salwar suit that seems like it’s made just for her. When I saw her at the door earlier this evening, I felt a part of me that was long dead come alive again.
As if the air around me was now charged, electric.
Throughout the evening, I have had to tear myself away from fixating on her lips and what I want to do to them. I look at her slender hands and wonder what it would be like to hold them.
Her phone beeps.
For the past couple of hours, I have seen texts appear on Aanchal’s phone panel. She replies, then swipes it away.
‘How’s Vicky?’
Aanchal knows what I’m asking. I don’t care about Vicky. I want to know if Vicky and Aanchal are still going strong. More than that, I am hoping they are not.
