I catch sight of her from afar.
She’s with Vanita’s friends at the bar where the bartender is tossing bottles into the air and whipping up strange-looking drinks that everyone tastes and crinkles their noses at.
Aanchal’s black lehenga, intricately embroidered with gold, catches the light and shimmers. She looks better than I had imagined she would when I had picked it up from the showroom and packed it in the suitcase. She has little or no make-up, or make-up that fools you that there is no make-up. She does this intentionally because she’s a rank narcissist and wants to shove her raw beauty in other people’s heavily made-up, Botox-ed faces. My gaze drifts to her exposed back and the tiny knot that secures her shimmering choli in place. Inside me, a fury intertwines with an unexpected desire for her.
What was I thinking all those years ago? That I could be with her? There’s nothing good that can come out of beauty like hers. Only pain. As her lips move while talking to a girl, all I want to do is push her against one of the fake pillars and shut her up with a kiss and let the past obliterate itself. I push that thought out of my mind. Nothing good is going to come of it. She’s a lost cause.
We walk towards the bar.
The wedding venue glitters in the background.
For a couple of years after the break-up, I had tormented myself with daydreams of Aanchal and me getting married. In my mind, we had been through it all—the grand weddings in different destinations, the littlevarmalagames, the stunning lehengas, the happy tears, the wild dance parties, the post-wedding orgasms and naked afternoons spent in the plunge pools in expensive honeymoon hotels. I had imagined taking her hand and promising to be with her forever, again and again, in this life and the next. I had fought hard to clear my mind of those thoughts, cauterize my mind and my heart from her. But now, seeing her like this, it’s like driving a serrated knife through those wounds and twisting it. The impossibility of it all tortures me.
Our eyes meet, and for the tiniest of moments, all my anger melts away, replaced by a rush of love that I know will never be reciprocated, or respected. I don’t know what’s worse: that you’re loved back or your love’s seen as an inconvenience? Loving Aanchal is a constant act of self-inflicted pain.
I look at her, happy, uncaring, unbothered about the past, and like in a cheap Bollywood flick, I want to grab her hand, take her to the mandap, drop a flaming lighter into thehavankund,stride through the sevenpheras, then lead her to the wedding suite and take her.
We walk towards the bar where she stands. I recognize her perfume immediately.
The guys with me place their orders with the bartender.
‘Last drink,’ I warn Gaurav, who walks away from his sister and me.
Aanchal notices me when she turns. The laughter dies from her face. I enjoy this more.
‘You stayed back?’
‘Is it difficult for you to imagine that someone could stickaround?’
‘That’s not a very smart clapback, Daksh. Maybe it’s a good thing our relationship ended because you would have given me such weak replies all my life.’
‘You don’t deserve the best of me.’
She looks straight at me, and then nonchalantly sips herdrink.
I make a show of scanning her from head to toe and then say, ‘By the way, you look stunning. It’s as if I have a crush on you again like old times, but the only difference is that you’re also a horrible person.’
She laughs. ‘I would take you seriously, Daksh, but by now I know I should take nothing you say seriously. You’re clearly not a man of your word.’
I point to a girl who’s at the chaat counter. ‘That’s Vanita’s friend, Tejal, right?’ I ask Aanchal. ‘The one in green? What do you think of her?’
She throws her head back in annoyance. ‘Daksh, we are not seventeen. Let’s not play this game of making each other jealous. Yes, she’s Tejal, and if something does happen between the two of you, I will be quite happy,’ she says.
I never got how ex-lovers say they are happy for each other. I harbour no such feelings.
She chuckles and says, ‘But, Daksh, listen to me, just don’t drag her into this mandap and ask her to marry you tomorrow morning.’
Talking to Aanchal is like this. Every moment is like getting my heart ripped out.
‘And for the record, I’m very happy about Rajat and you too,’ I tell her.
She eyes me with disgust. ‘We are friends.’
‘Your definition of friends is rather broad. So Rajat, apart from being the guy with whom you cheated on Vicky, is also the guy who helped you get the abortion pills because... let me guess... he also wanted to sleep with you again?’
The disgust in her eyes changes to rage. ‘You’re a hypocrite, Daksh. Rajat, as a friend, did what you couldn’t, even while saying you loved me.’
‘I think I have had enough,’ I say with a chuckle. ‘Just wanted to hurt you a little. I quite like the anger in your voice. Nice.’
