It’s borrowed.
It’s constructed.
It’s Daksh Dey’s persona.
* * *
Every time I read a tweet, listen to Gaurav’s witty remark over a game stream or see an insightful caption of his post, I am acutely aware that each and every word belongs to Daksh. Every joke, every idea, every observation is his. Gaurav is a gifted gamer, but Daksh has packaged him like an exciting product that people lapped up and loved. If I’m wearing lehengas made by Manish Malhotra, it’s because Daksh made him likeable enough for hundreds of thousands of people to follow him.
We get into one of the dozens of steel and glass lifts. I don’t want to talk about Gaurav any more because if you talk about him, you have to talk about Daksh. The two of them have been conjoined twins since they started working together three years ago.
I steer the conversation in a different direction.
‘I don’t like you,’ I tell Aditya. ‘She’s throwing away her life by getting married to you.’
Vanita mumbles a soft ‘aw’ and kisses Aditya’s forehead.
Aditya laughs. ‘Vanita told me that. Trust me, I have tried to tell her that we should wait for a bit. But your friend wants to do all of this right away.’
‘You must have brainwashed my friend. Just good sex doesn’t mean a relationship will last.’
Aditya’s eyes light up like a little child’s. He turns to Vanita. ‘You told her we have good sex?’
‘No, I told her I’m getting married to a guy I have horrible sex with.’
Aditya seems to grow 3 inches taller.
We turn towards my room. I can hear the revelry that only comes from a place where a wedding party is shacking. There are shouts and laughter and teasing. Vanita swipes my room card. Aditya pulls my suitcase inside the room.
‘Listen, we are all going to the poolside for drinks. You have fifteen minutes,’ says Vanita.
I hand over the clanging bag of Dubai Duty-Free to Aditya. ‘Then you will need this.’
Aditya peers into the bag. His face breaks into a huge smile. ‘And here I thought you were serious about hating me. You’re now our best friend! Now all we need to do is find a boy for you!’
4.
Daksh Dey
Amruta and I record a three-hour episode on ‘How to Deal with Kids When They Swear and How to Make Them Stop,’ an interesting topic, because both of us believe swear words, such as ‘fucking’, ‘behenchod’ and ‘madarchod’, have practical use in daily life. Most of the advice we give on our podcast is stolen from articles, books and what we hear in other podcasts. We can’t be trusted with our own advice and we warn our listeners multiple times in each podcast that we are ‘accidental parents’. Sometimes, we are so unoriginal that we think we are fraudsters earning money by summarizing various sources.
‘You’re very funny during the recording. I hate it when you’re funny,’ complains Amruta. ‘Now our mail ID will be full of Daksh!You’re so cute! messages from women with unhelpful husbands.’
‘Look who’s talking,’ I respond. ‘You have the most number of marriage proposals per mail. You can choose to be married to a thousand men at the same time.’
‘A legitimate nightmare,’ she says with a chuckle.
Almost every mail in our podcast-only-mail is addressed to Amruta and comes from a very specific type of man. We have narrowed down the profile. A mid-forties divorced (very occasionally widowed), polished man, with plenty of money that has been earned from a management job/software, father of at least one kid, a wife who’s no longer in the picture.
Amruta has a deep, husky voice and sounds like someone in her early forties, or at least in her mid-thirties. Despite her reminding everyone that she had her kids early, everyone tends to forget she’s only twenty-six. Sometimes, even I forget she’s only twenty-six. She doesn’t look a day over nineteen. That she’s 5’1” and has a round face makes her look even younger.
Sometimes I, too, forget I’m twenty-five.
Butwe feel oldwhen we look at others our age. People our age are still doubled over in front of clubs, vomiting their insides out while we are ironing the kids’ uniforms for the next morning. Amruta and I did a two-part podcast about ‘The FOMO of Young Parents’and came to the very obvious conclusion that we want to do everything: be with the kids but also party, read books but also go on long drives, stay at home but also go on impromptu jaunts, go on solo vacations but also go on family trips, watch a kid’s movie but also party with people our age. It’s because of these fairly obvious, unintelligent pieces of advice that we caution our listeners not to take us seriously.
‘You’re getting the mathematics homework done today, okay?’ Amruta warns me the third time in the past few hours.
‘I . . . fine,’ I mumble. ‘I . . . just can’t believe that they are still struggling with subtraction. How can someone—’
