I look at her, the words forming on my lips instantaneously.
‘Do you love me, Aanchal?’
‘Yes. More than anything in the world.’
7.
Aanchal Madan
Daksh
I’ve missed you.
For the past month, he has been sending me this text every morning. And every morning it fills the air with magic, the sort that makes you believe in second chances—or third, or fourth, I have lost track of which chance it is for us. It’s a text and yet it feels as if he’s thrown a dagger right at my heart, piercing it through and through. A single text from Daksh, the guy who lurked in the shadows and the corners of my dreams, haunting me, has undone years of coping mechanisms, the emotionalrafu,patchwork, I had done on my heart. It’s like I’m twenty and he’s in that hotel and my heart is aching for him. How can he turn back time like that?
In the past month, we have met sixteen times. I have been to Hyderabad, Kochi, Ahmedabad and Chennai, and he has surprised me in all of them. I pretended to be angry, but my pretence always fell through whenever he reached out to touch me. Every time he starts to tease and flirt, it’s as if I’m instantly transported back to being a nineteen-year-old Aanchal, full of excitement and hope, while he stays the suave thirty-three-year-old, his age lending him an additional layer of wisdom and intellect, a leg up on me. There’s an unmistakable dynamic shift there, a seesaw of power. Funnily enough, his grouse is the exact opposite—he insists that he’s the one reverting to his teenage years, while I, like some experienced cougar, am the one wielding power over him.
I find it’s true when they say nostalgia is a drug, and memories can be deceptive. Because my heart strangely glossesover all the pain. Theoretically, it remembers every bitter word, every disappointment, every tear-streaked night, every promise he broke, every stroke of bad luck he brought on to me. Yet, I can feel my pulse quicken when I see his text.
It’s only 6 a.m. He must still be in bed. Is he texting me while he’s wishing I was with him? What is he thinking about me? Because all I can think about is him slipping his hands inside my T-shirt and pressing himself against me. I can hear his whispers in my ears asking me if he should brush first and me whispering back that it doesn’t matter. What’s he doing to himself at 6 a.m. while texting me? Is it what I think? Can I ask him? What if it’s the answer I’m imagining? Will I ask him to show himself to me?
How does he have this power over me, even after all this time? It’s as if my body remembers him, misses him, yearns for him. It’s like his love is a religion I was born into and no matter what I do, he will always have his mark on me. My atheism against his religion of love is also a kind of love. I’ve got my friends, my job, but I realize that he, somehow, has always been lodged right in the centre of my heart. Despite the hurt and the pain, despite the years, he still holds this unbelievable, undeniable place in my life. So here I am, staring at my screen.
I have missed you too.
And then, after not thinking too much, I text him again.
Where are you?
He sends me a live location. I click on the link and it shows a map that I immediately recognize. The journey from Delhi to Dehradun, which used to be a gruelling nine-hour drive over potholes with a little bit of road thrown in, has now been reduced to a five-hour journey on smoother roads. This option is much more appealing to me compared to the hassle of waiting in airport queues, waiting for luggage and then catching another taxi to get home.
I call him frantically.
‘Where are you going?’ I ask. ‘I will be there on Tuesday. Why—’
He interrupts me. ‘I’m not going there for you. I’m meeting Aunty.’
My heart jumps because I know what’s he talking about, but it scares me. ‘Whose aunty?’
‘Your mother,’ he says, as if it’s no big deal.
My pulse shoots up. ‘Why are you meeting her?’
‘Because I need to ask her if it’s okay for me to get married to you.’ His voice remains calm.
‘. . . but.’
‘What? You don’t want to get married to me?’
‘You don’t want to get married to me?’ I mimic his tone. ‘That’s the worst proposal in the history of marriage proposals.’
‘I—’
‘No, listen to me, Daksh,’ I say, gathering my guts. ‘This is not the 1980s that you go to my mother, and she just hands me over to you. I don’t want to get married to you.’
‘Of course you do.’
‘I absolutely do not. You and I, it’s...’
