‘And this guy?’
‘Saket.’
‘Saket, right.’
‘He could be my life. Just like Amruta is yours,’ she says.
‘Where was all the maturity when we needed it?’ I muse, remembering our vocal showdowns, the tears, the breaking of hearts, and the feeling that we would never be happy again.
‘You wouldn’t have been you had you been mature, Daksh. You wouldn’t have been worth falling in love with. If I had to be changed by someone’s love, I would pick you a thousand times.’
‘So, when are you guys getting married?’
‘Shouldn’t I be asking you that question? It’s been, what, two years since you’ve been engaged?’
‘There are a lot of moving parts,’ I explain. ‘Her kids, Rabbani, Baba.’
‘This is your dream. You love swimming in complexity. That’s your thing, Daksh.’
Just then, the waiter approaches and lingers near our table, staring at our plates and then at us, subtly suggesting it’s time to leave if we’ve finished.
We pay the bill and make our way out.
11.
Aanchal Madan
I don’t know what it is about Daksh, but it’s annoying to the bone that he seems to grow more attractive every time I see him,and our tenuous link never completely severs. At eighteen, he had a boyish attractiveness that threw me off-guard. Everything he said seemed flirtatious. The attention he paid to me was heady, addictive and nothing I had ever felt before. At twenty-two, he was at his lowest, barely scraping enough will and energy to last through the day. He had no money, no house to speak of, and an entire family to take care of, and yet when he met me, the enthusiasm in his eyes and his touch thrilled me to bits. Even now on some nights, I wake up to the feverish dream of him taking me in the bathroom of the hotel in Mumbai when I had gone there for an office convention. When I met him at twenty-five, three years after I broke his heart, he still burned with the pain. And so did I. And that kind of made him mine. It’s been two years now that he has been with Amruta. Their podcast is brilliant, but hearing them together also pinches my heart.
‘I can drop you home,’ he says with a kind smile that has always lit up my days whenever he has thrown them my way.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course,’ he says. ‘My rental is parked there.’
He leads the way. I follow him quietly. Inside my heart, a storm rages. I can tell Saket the bare facts and he would understand. He loves me, or whatever his definition of love is. He would get it. Or even if he doesn’t, he will say he gets it and not probe further. He knows all that there is to know about Daksh, he has heard the podcast, he has seen Amruta, and he’s marked the entire situation as manageable. Do I deserve him? Maybe not. Will I love him with all my heart if we are together? I will have to. I can’t make the mistake of loving someone at half-speed again. I wish someone had told me this before. Love requires complete devotion. That’s the only way to do it.
‘There it is,’ he says and points to a bike in the parking lot.
‘That’s safe?’ I ask him.
‘I rode it here, seemed pretty safe,’ he answers.
He takes off the helmet from the handlebar and tosses it to me.
‘Don’t be a hero,’ I tell him.
‘I will buy one from the next red light,’ he says with a smile.
I know it wasn’t his plan though he makes it sound like it was. It’s just the way he is. Putting others before himself. Except for that one time. I climb on to the bike and he tells me to hold on.
‘The bike looks light but has significant power,’ he warns me.
He’s right. It takes me by surprise. I flap around for some handle behind me. Failing to find any, I put my hands around him, clasping lightly at first and then tightly. He zips around the city as if he’s familiar with both the roads and the bike. We drive for thirty minutes before he spots a coconut stand and stops.
‘Remember this?’
‘How can I forget?’ I tell him.
