‘That’s me.’
‘A motorcycle?’ she asks.
‘Or, as Rabbani says, an attempt to cling to my youth.’
‘We can’t have beers then,’ she says.
‘Look at you, changing your mind twice in ten minutes,’ I say. ‘We have to get a helmet.’
‘We always have to get a helmet.’
Ten minutes later, Aanchal has picked up a 300-rupee helmet, and we grab a bottle of Absolut and Diet Coke from the shop. We pour out half the bottle of Coke and replace it with vodka.
‘We are drinking to forget?’ I ask her.
‘Absolutely.’
The concoction burns my throat as I drink it, while Aanchal seems unfazed, drinking as if it’s water.
‘Are you an alcoholic now?’ I ask her.
‘I have destroyed my taste buds by burning them with so much hot coffee over the years that I can’t taste anything now.’
‘I don’t think the science adds up.’
She looks at me. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not Gaurav. I just don’t need to be sad with you.’
‘Good to know I make you sad.’
‘You make me more angry than sad,’ she says, heading for the pillion.
‘Are we being reckless enough to ride drunk?’
‘When have we ever not been reckless, Daksh?’ she asks, her eyes glinting with mischief, regret and sadness. ‘It’s always been like that.’
I mount the rider’s seat and fasten my helmet. She secures the bottle between us and wraps her arms around me. The warmth of the alcohol courses through my veins. With no specific destination in mind, I rev the motorcycle and plunge headlong into the traffic. She presses herself against me, making my heart pound. My mind wrestles with her sudden reappearance in my life, but it has happened so many times that my surprise is theonly surprising thing about it. We ride in silence, only breaking it to drink from the Coke bottle. Ever so often, I steal a glance at her in the mirror. Our eyes lock. We both know that we are tipsy, teetering on the edge of being drunk.
‘We are drinking to forget,’ she whispers into my ear.
She hands me the bottle, then reclaims it, stray droplets cascading down her neck. I navigate towards the under-construction Dwarka sectors, aware of the growing buzz and unsteadiness of my drive. We are done with the bottle. She hurls it away, watching it land neatly in a dustbin. She looks at me, smiling for the first time this evening, ‘Did you see it?’
‘I did,’ I respond.
She leans in and holds me tightly, igniting every fibre of my being.
‘I’ve missed you,’ she whispers into my ear, her lips grazing it.
I slow down my motorcycle to hear her better, to sear the memory of her saying it into my soul.
‘I have hated you so much,’ she says, her voice a long drawl. ‘So, so much. You smothered us with so much love, it was suffocating.’
I couldn’t grasp it then, but I do now. I assumed that love, attention and time would heal everything. I treated the Madans the same way I treated Rabbani after Mumma’s death. With Rabbani, I pretended life would go on, that these things happen, and so we should just forge ahead. The only problem was that Rabbani was four; these guys were adults. I failed to acknowledge the crushing pain everyone was experiencing and the need to grieve however they felt necessary. Over the years, I’ve come to understand why the Madans despised me. It wasn’t solely because I drove Gaurav to suicide—which I did—but also because I never allowed anyone, including myself, to grieve properly. I thought I was being patient, but it was the opposite. I wanted everyone to deal with their emotions as quickly aspossible. Partly so that I could stop feeling so fucking guilty about it.
‘You were not to be blamed,’ she says.
But of course, I was to be blamed. I’d failed my one truefriend.
‘I know, Aanchal,’ I lie.
