My friends had explicitly asked me not to listen to him, would even check my playlist. So I resorted to listening to him and then deleting any traces of him like some kind of thief. I needed to have a clean break from him. And I tried.
When Saket and I neared the dreaded decision, I tried.
I didn’t stalk Daksh on social media, didn’t seek out his pictures, but I couldn’t stay away from his voice. I failed. I failed him and I failed Saket.
I heard him grow and become a wiser, complex, interesting version of himself. His voice grew deeper, his pauses got longer, his ideas more nuanced, his knowledge wider. I heard the spontaneity of his youth give way to calmness and maturity. And sometimes, I felt that this new version of Daksh, the stoic, composed one, would understand me better. He would sit and listen and feel every word of mine just as he did back when we first met, when the complexities between him and me didn’texist.
I have fallen in love with him a little bit more every day.
Even though in those podcasts I heard his wife, I didn’t feel any envy. Not then, not when I saw the pictures of their ‘wedding’ in the registrar’s office, not even when I was leaving that cold hospital room back in Dubai four years ago.His wife.The words were strange and never had any impact on me. It was a non-issue. What I felt for Daksh wasn’t straightforward or simple like,I love him, and hence I want to hold his hand into the sunset. It’s a complex, stupid contradiction of feelings that I haven’t even unravelled. Did I want to pack him in a backpackand take him to New York? I did. But I also wanted to be alone in New York, unsupported, and try to find my own way around.
Saket understood it—whatever he could—over a period of months. He weathered it, tolerated it, till he couldn’t. The closer Saket got to me, the nearer the date of our decision crept, the more drawn to Daksh I became. Had it been anyone else but Saket, things would have been ugly. Had anyone stumbled on the folder where I filed my conversations with Daksh—the messages, the phone calls, pictures that were a decade old, snippets of things he had said in the podcast, pictures he had uploaded on his social media—they wouldn’t have forgiven me so easily.
Loving Daksh from afar has been easy. A few hours every week, when I’m lying in bed, he talks to me. I know everything that he has been through during the week. I get to know of his work, of Rabbani, of how his father’s doing, of what movies he has watched and what he thinks of them, his ever-changing lists of favourite authors and tennis players and cricketers. How many couples have this clear a line of communication? He doesn’t know about me, and I don’t ask him to love me.
All I knew was that I loved him.
Sometimes, Daksh and his wife would record their podcasts in the morning. Daksh’s voice would be hoarser, raspier. He would talk while he sipped his coffee. I would be in bed thinking about his lips.
Every time he would sign off from the podcast, I would mumble, ‘I love you, Daksh,’ into the air.
Stupid, I know.
There were a few podcasts where he would be the only one talking. Those weren’t about children or how to be parents. They were just him talking about his day, the things he likes, the things he’s passionate about. He talks a lot about motorcycles—which he admits is like a midlife crisis striking early. He gushesabout the fiction he has been reading, even if some of them are cheesy vampire romances. At times, he does movie reviews. Although they are possibly the worst reviews in the world because he likes everything. His food reviews are even worse.
But the ones I like the most are when he records his morning podcasts while he’s alone in his house. That’s when I feel I’m with him. Even on the cold New York nights, I can sense his presence with me, in my room, inside my blanket. Those are the nights I touch myself and imagine it’s him. I think about his fingers tracing my body, his chest against mine, his breath in my ear.
‘You’re not everyone’s cup of tea,’ I tell Daksh something he already knows.
‘You seem happy about it,’ he responds.
‘I was one of the fans who used to comment on your Instagram posts that Amruta and you sound like best friends, not the love of each other’s lives.’
With a knowing nod, he says, ‘You were the profile AMDP_A?’
I’m surprised, but I’m also not surprised. ‘Yes.’
‘Andamans, Mumbai, Dubai, Phuket . . . Aanchal?’
‘That was quick.’
6.
Daksh Dey
The rehab centre could easily pass off as a luxurious five-star resort, with its inviting lobby, the welcome drinks, the smiles on the staff’s faces and the cosy waiting area. Even though individuals come here to confront and deal with their addictions, the atmosphere is light. Tejal warns us one last time about not saying anything that might upset Gaurav.
‘The first few months will be like walking on eggshells,’ she tells Gaurav’s parents, who I know want to scold him.
They believe Gaurav’s failure in life reflects their parenting, but it’s not completely true. If kids are truly mirror images of the people who raise them, then looking at Rabbani, people should assume that I’m fiercely argumentative, someone who loves to pick fights and comes back home dishevelled, shirt hanging out of my trousers. Every few days, I get a complaint from the school telling me Rabbani has been in a scuffle with a climate-change denier or a bully, or someone who called her a tomboy, or called her brother, me, a podcast vulture who made money off her by talking about her.
‘He’s there,’ says the receptionist, pointing at Gaurav, who’s being escorted by two attendants.
Gaurav’s chatting with the attendants, shaking hands, smiling like he’s talking to old friends and not people who kept him locked up in a room while he shivered, cursed, pissed in his pants, writhed from withdrawal symptoms and wanted to break out of this facility. Twice in six months, he has relapsed, once almost OD-ing. Twice, they have had to start over. His old clothes, now too loose, hang awkwardly on his frame. It feels as if he has been taken apart and put back hastily together. Only a semblance of the old Gaurav remains. He’s thinner by a margin, but his face is bright. When he looks at us, his shoulders slump a little.
‘Big smiles,’ warns Tejal.
We do as we are told. Gaurav smiles back at us.
