Raghav
‘I will call you at four to wake you up.’
‘Don’t stress, Raghav. I will tell the reception people to call me,’ says Megha. ‘Get some sleep.’
‘You think I will be able to sleep?’ I ask her. ‘And I had a lot of coffee. And this girl here, she talks quite a bit.’
‘So does her boyfriend,’ she says. ‘He talked all the way to the hotel room. I think I might know him better than I know you. They are cute though.’
‘Cuter than us?’
Every therapy app, self-help bot, Claude and Gemini keep telling me that I shouldn’t ask her these questions too often. It reeks of insecurity, but at this point it’s a reflex. I keep wondering if all of this is a dream and one day Megha’s going to wake up, realize I’m not worthy of her and walk out.
‘We are not cute,’ she grumbles. ‘We are hot. Hot people remain hot in their sixties and seventies while cute’s shelf life is just till the forties. Don’t call me cute again.’
‘By the way, that’s what she said too,’ I say. ‘Thatyou’re hot.’
‘I like her better now,’ says Megha and laughs.
The laugh that fooled me into believing she was in love with me right on the first date. My heart broke a little when I saw she laughs like that at other people too. Now she puts on a stern tone and says, ‘Just put your head down and try to sleep a bit. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.’
‘I have called the Urban Company guys,’ I tell her. ‘They will unpack stuff. We don’t have to move an inch.’
‘Cancel the guys,’ she says. ‘I need you for me tomorrow.’
‘Baby, we need a bed—’
She interrupts me. ‘We will figure it out,’ her voice now a whisper.
It’s intentional and it has the desired effect.
I imagine her tucked inside her blanket on a soft hotel mattress. I instantly regret not checking into one too. I could be on a call with her, taking this‘we will figure it out’conversation to its conclusion. Then, we could both sleep clutching our phones, spent.
‘I will have to cut this conversation short here,’ I tell her. ‘This is the wrong place for a...’
‘For a . . .?’ she whispers impishly.
‘Just come here already.’
‘The weather gods are against us,’ she says. ‘Like everyone else is.’
A few seconds of silence follow. Every time I read a book on grief and anger, they tell me not to fill these silences with words aimed at happiness. They tell me to sit with the loss and the grief. With time, they promise me, the sharp, jagged edges will blunt. But if they don’t, then? There are times I notice the lost look in her eyes, and she sees that I’m noticing it too—but it’s so often that we have stopped asking if we’re okay, instead we say it will be okay through nods and forced smiles. We tell each other that once it’s in the same physical space, we will be able to hold each other, and heal each other better. But what if she still feels that way? No, I can’t think like that.
‘It will be a good story to tell our kids,’ I say, falling once again into the trap of making it sound less worse than it is. ‘Of which we will have four.’
She brightens up and says, ‘Or more, depending on how rich we get eventually.’
‘Very rich, of course,’ I say.
‘But if my breasts get too saggy, I will get—’
‘Can you stop putting the image of—’
She interrupts. ‘Of my breasts. My hot breasts, Raghav.’
‘I’m cutting the phone now,’ I grumble. ‘Sleep. I will call you at four.’
‘Bye, baby,’ she says and cuts the call.
