‘Guys, seriously,’ Tejal interrupts. ‘Stop feeding this thought. Let’s go.’
‘No,’ Raghav says flatly. ‘I have a match to watch—’
‘GUYS. PLEASE,’ Tejal yells. ‘I’M NOT STOPPING TILL YOU COME.’
17
Raghav
There’s a spot behind a metro pillar. A known blind spot. It’s where we have hung out before. And there’s a sewer five minutes away, in case someone needs to vomit. Most likely that will be Aditi. She’s not a lightweight. If anything, she might be a budding alcoholic. Once she starts, she can’t stop. And when she does, it’s too late. Lately, drinking is Sumrit and Tejal’s go-to in the healing process they have decided for us. We indulge them because they have been there for us.
Right from Day One.
Tejal had almost camped in our house and put Aditi on suicide watch. She would freak out every time Aditi would go to the balcony. As Tejal told me later, she was the one who recruited Sumrit—a reluctant participant to say the least—to help me get better. The first month was the worst, obviously. A lot of crying happened. Existential crisis,what’s the point of living...that sort of stuff. Tejal said all the right words,you’re loved, live for us—aided by the internet, I’m sure. Sumrit was always in the background, helping in a more functional way. When my office e-mailed asking when I would be back, it was he who stopped me from sending a ‘Fuck you’ to them. He would restock groceries, pay the bills, keep the house running.
Once, I heard him say to Tejal, ‘Maybe we are spoiling them. We should let them do things on their own.’
‘Are you crazy?’ Tejal had thundered and gave him a laundry list of things to do.
It was Tejal who had kept Aditi from going full-tilt berserk on her family. Aditi’s Bhaiya had reached out, knocked on the door one day and demanded she come home with them. Aditi had brandished a knife and threatened to slit her throat right there if he took one step further. With the hindsight of a year, it sounds crazy, but at the time I remember watching it unfold and finding it the most logical thing to do. In fact, I envied her. I saw her dead on the floor, blood spilling from her throat, and was jealous. I wanted to be dead, too.
When her Bhaiya didn’t let up, Aditi went on the offensive and told her family about her jiju’s affair. It was only when she threatened to drop all the proof in the family WhatsApp group that her family retreated. For a couple of months, she would send threatening voice messages to them until Tejal, as she later confessed, made her stop.
She had also found a new project. When it was slated that the airlines would pay compensation to everyone’s kin who had died in the aircraft, the airlines tried to bury everyone in documents. Aditi took it on herself to fill out people’s forms, print copies, make folders, get everything attested. She buried herself in the torture of administrative work
I didn’t harbour any feelings for my family. I was dead, instead. They didn’t evoke any emotions within me. When Shilpi reached out and then my parents, I just... they were strangers to me. They said conciliatory things, but they were just empty words to me. WhenItold themIdidn’t want to talk to them any more, that they were dead to me, it was not out of spite, but out of feeling nothing. There were times I tried to evoke something in me, think of them as dead—a road accident, a fire in the house, cancer—but even then, I felt nothing.
The only people who meant anything to me were Tejal, Sumrit and our housemaid. Trauma brings people together and although it didn’t bring Aditi and me any closer—we oftentold each other we brought bad luck to each other—it did bring Tejal and Sumrit together. A late night turned into a make-out session, a decision that led to Tejal letting go of her old boyfriend. Within a week of that, they started dating. They had announced it with excitement and got blank faces from both Aditi and me.
That whole year feels like a blurry, dark movie now. And today is just another scene.
At the metro pillar, Tejal spreads a newspaper like a picnic mat. The concrete is warm. She plays soft, bass-heavy Pakistani music from her speaker. Aditi makes her usual joke about funding terrorists. We all ignore it. I rip the ice packet, drop cubes into plastic glasses, pour uneven drinks. Tejal plates the momos. For a while, no one speaks. The chutney burns my throat. The momos are rubbery. The drink is still warm.
We wait—for the drinks to hit, for the feelings to surface. As I knew they would, around the second round, I say, ‘So, what now?’
Tejal flicks a peanut at a crow. Misses. ‘I don’t know,’ she replies. ‘About what, exactly?’
‘I think what Raghav wants to ask is, do you think we’ll ever be normal people?’ Aditi asks. The alcohol frees the questions she’s always carrying within. ‘Will you have to keep doing this all your life?’
Tejal snorts. ‘Normal is bullshit. You don’t “move on” from this. You just learn to carry it. The question is, are you going to carry it, or are you going to let it drown you right here?’
‘Don’t start with your motivational bullshit again,’ I tell Tejal.
‘Don’t talk to my friend like that,’ Aditi says.
‘And bhai, she’s my girlfriend,’ says Sumrit. ‘Listen to what she’s saying.’
‘I’m sorry, Tejal, but I’m not sure I want to do what you’re saying,’ I tell her. ‘Carrying it sounds exhausting. I would rather just give in to it.’
‘Bro, why are you scaring us?’ says Sumrit.
‘What do you want me to say?’ I ask. ‘That I’m fine? I’m not, bhai. And there’s no changing that. The words you say, she says, are kind, nice, but... I... I still feel the same things.’
‘C’mon,’ Tejal protests. ‘You guys are doing much better. You can’t deny it.’
‘I like how you force me to tell you that I’m doing better,’ I say. ‘... that you’re doing a good job. Fine, you are. And yes, I am better, she’s better. But I think this is it. This base level of sadness will always remain.’
Tejal looks at Aditi for support but gets only silence. She’s staring at her drink.
