Half Girlfriend

by Chetan Bhagat

  ‘You should have told me. We need not have played today,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said. She removed her hands from her face and smiled at me.

  It had been a week since my panel recommended taking Riya to my room again. ‘Make Bihar proud, else you don’t matter’ is what they had repeated to me all week. Today, I had the chance.

  ‘Hey, you want to rest in my room?’ I said.

  ‘Sneak in?’

  I played it cool. ‘Yeah. You rest. Take a nap. I can study, or will even leave the room if you want me to.’

  ‘You don’t have to leave your own room.’ She stood up.

  She had said I didn’t have to leave. It meant she had agreed to come to Rudra. Girls never tell you anything straight out anyway. You have to interpolate and extrapolate their responses to figure out what’s on their mind.

  I smuggled her in again. As I shut the door of my room, I knew my moment of truth had come. Make Bihar proud, make yourself count, I repeated in my head.

  Riya sat on the bed, legs extended straight.

  ‘Lie down,’ I said.

  ‘I’m not that sick. Just need to rest,’ Riya said and smiled. ‘I see you’ve cleaned up your room.’

  ‘Well, it’s still not as fancy as yours.’

  ‘It’s a room in my father’s house. How I wish I could stay in a hostel like you.’

  ‘Hey, would you like to change?’ I said, switching topics. ‘You said you were cold.’

  She had a change of clothes in her rucksack.

  ‘Where?’ she said. ‘I can’t use the bathroom here.’

  ‘You could change here.’

  ‘Ha ha, nice try, mister.’

  ‘I meant I could leave the room.’

  ‘Oh, really? Such a gentleman.’

  I had learnt to ignore her sarcasm. I shrugged.

  ‘I’m fine in these,’ she said.

  ‘I’m not,’ I said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Those shorts. They distract me.’

  ‘These red shorts?’

  ‘Well, the legs, to be precise. The legs the shorts are unable to hide.’

  Riya laughed. She took a bedsheet and covered herself.

  ‘Here. Better, mister? Now what? You want to study?’

  Damn, I had lost my view.

  ‘Yeah. You’ll rest?’

  ‘Yes,’ Riya said and sniggered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Like that’s going to happen.’

  ‘Of course it is,’ I said and turned away from her. I sat on the chair, switched on the table lamp and opened my sociology textbook.

  Riya sat on the bed. She seemed amused and somewhat stumped at me letting her be. A few minutes later, she lay down on the bed.

  ‘What are you studying?’ she said, her eyes closed.

  ‘Social uprisings in the early twentieth century.’

  ‘How are your grades?’

  ‘Not bad, but I’m no topper.’

  I went back to my book.

  ‘What do you want to do after graduation?’ she said. Girls cannot stand being ignored, that too for a textbook.

  ‘I’ve told you fifty times. Work in Delhi for a few years and then go back to Dumraon.’

  ‘Hmm,’ she said, her eyes still closed. She sounded like the nosey uncles who ask you questions only to dismiss your answers with a ‘hmm’.

  ‘Let me study, Riya. You also rest.’

  I didn’t have a strategy, but I did have an intuition on how to proceed. Don’t act too interested at first; she will just launch into a lecture.

  My curt responses puzzled her. I shut her up whenever she tried small talk. Finally, she grew quiet.

  ‘I’m tired,’ I said, after half an hour of silence.

  ‘I’m sleeping. Don’t disturb,’ she said. It was her turn to act pricey.

  ‘I also want to sleep.’

  ‘Stay there. I’m a patient. The patient is resting,’ she said, suppressing a smile.

  I shut my textbook. I went to the side of the bed and sat down.

  ‘Riya?’ I said, my voice soft.

  She didn’t respond, as if asleep. I lifted the quilt covering her. Her tiny shorts had bunched up even further. I couldn’t help but stare at her legs. She pulled the quilt back over her as a reflex. A girl knows she is being stared at, even in her sleep. I lay down next to her. I took care to have the least amount of body contact. I shared some of the quilt and shut my eyes.

  We lay still for two minutes. She turned to her side. Her nose poked into my right shoulder. Her hand touched my elbow. Even with my eyes closed, I felt her warmth next to me. I turned to face her, pretending to be asleep. Casually, I placed my left arm on her. She didn’t protest. My left hand touched her long hair. Her nose was now buried in my chest and I could feel her gentle breath on me. I slid my hand down her back and moved her closer towards me.

  She continued to sleep, or continued to pretend to sleep.

  I placed my leg over hers, my boldest move yet. The smooth bare skin of her leg touched mine. Electric sparks shot through me. I resisted the urge to kiss her. I let my hand slide further down her back. As I reached her lower back, her voice startled me.

  ‘Mr Jha,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, Miss Somani.’

  ‘This is not called sleeping.’

  ‘You can sleep.’

  ‘Oh, really? How do you expect me to with you all over me?’

  I laughed. I brought her closer and lifted her face. I tried to kiss her but she turned away.

  ‘Control yourself, Madhav,’ she said.

  She tried to extricate herself. I didn’t let go.

  ‘Why?’ I said.

  ‘That is what we agreed to.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Just. Oh my God, I just felt your. . . Madhav, let me go.’

  ‘Riya, come on.’

  ‘Can you just let me go? You are hurting me.’

  I let her go. She slid to the edge of the bed, away from me.

  ‘I want you.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Please let me.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You have to.’

  ‘What do you mean I have to?’ she said.

  She sat up on the bed. She glared at me, her posture stiff. However, I was too consumed with my own feelings to cave in at this point. I had waited and played the patience game for too long. I expected her to yield to me now.

  ‘What is your problem?’ I said.

  ‘What is your problem? I’m not a release for your horniness.’

  ‘I didn’t say you were.’

  ‘So why can’t you just stick to what we discussed? Nothing physical. Just close friends.’

  ‘That doesn’t work.’

  ‘Fine, maybe we can’t even be friends.’

  I couldn’t answer her. I had run out of strategies and clever responses. She stepped off the bed, straightened her clothes and picked up her rucksack to leave.

  Anger mixed with desire. I grabbed her hand.

  ‘You can’t just play with me. I’m not your toy.’

  ‘Toy?’

  ‘You are using me. Until another guy comes along.’

  ‘Whatever. You are trying to use me. Ruining a perfect friendship. Bye.’

  I pulled her close to me. She sat on the bed again, right next to me.

  ‘It isn’t a perfect friendship. I am not fully satisfied.’

  She didn’t like my answer.

  I bent forward to kiss her. She moved her face again.

  ‘Only once.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘I said no,’ she said, her voice firm.

  ‘I’m at my limit, Riya.’ I grabbed her shoulders.

  ‘Madhav, I haven’t seen this side of you. You are using physical force on me.’

  ‘I want to say something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Deti hai to de, varna kat le.’

  ‘What?’

  I had sa
id it in coarse Bhojpuri-accented Hindi. I had said: ‘make love to me, or leave’. Actually, that sounds respectable. If I had to make an honest translation, I would say: ‘fuck me, or fuck off’. Hell, even that sounds way better than how I said it.

  I don’t know what came over me that day. Maybe I just couldn’t wait anymore. Perhaps I felt insecure and scared. Most likely I am a crass Bihari from Dumraon whose true animal nature had come out. I realized I had spoken filth. I tried to take it back.

  ‘What the hell did you just say?’

  ‘Nothing. Listen, I just. . .’

  I released my grip. Before I could collect my thoughts, Riya Somani had collected her belongings and left.

  She refused to take my calls. She didn’t reply to any of my twenty-seven messages. I waited for her at the college entrance every morning. She stepped out of her BMW, ignored me and walked quickly into her classroom.

  During breaks she surrounded herself with her girlfriends. When I approached her in the cafeteria, she took out her phone and pretended to be on a call.

  ‘That was a bit much,’ Shailesh said. I had told my friends about the debacle in my room. They had listened with much interest, hoping for a story with titillating action. Instead, they heard of a total fiasco. When I repeated the ‘deti hai. . .’ line I had said to Riya, even my thick-skinned friends cringed. We spoke filth sometimes but nobody would ever talk like that to a girl. I, the idiot, had spoken like that to the woman I loved, worshipped, adored and respected more than anyone else on earth.

  ‘Fix this disaster, rather than focusing on intimacy right now,’ Ashu had said, his tone irritated.

  Well, I had tried to fix it. Riya just wouldn’t meet me. Helpless, I had no option but to stalk her. I had to talk to her alone. I swore to myself not to say a word of Hindi, lest it come out crudely again.

  I did find her alone, finally. She sat in the library, immersed in her textbook, poring over the history of European literature. She wore a red-and-white salwar-kameez with black earrings.

  ‘Riya,’ I whispered.

  She stood up to change her seat.

  ‘Two minutes, I beg you,’ I said.

  She ignored me. She moved to another table full of students. I couldn’t talk to her there.

  ‘I’m waiting outside,’ I said. Ten students looked up at me, startled. Riya continued to read the same page.

  I waited outside the library for two and a half hours. When she came out, she saw me and walked in the other direction.

  ‘Two minutes,’ I said as I ran up to her.

  ‘I don’t want to talk to you, at all. Understand?’

  ‘I’ll keep following you. Might as well talk.’

  She glared at me and stood still, her hands balling into fists.

  ‘Your time has started,’ she said.

  ‘Listen, I am really, really sorry.’

  She crossed her arms, textbook still in hand.

  ‘Don’t waste your time. Sorry is not going to work.’

  ‘I didn’t mean it.’

  ‘Why did you say it? Do you know how it made me feel?’ She stared into my eyes. I looked away. ‘I’m a reserved person, Madhav. I have issues opening up to people. I trusted you. And you. . .’ She bit her lower lip.

  ‘I just. . .’

  ‘Just what? The stuff you said. I may not speak much Hindi, but I do understand it, Madhav,’ she said and turned her face sideways. Then she said as if to herself, ‘My friends had warned me about you.’

  ‘I just love you, Riya.’

  ‘Yeah, right. Indeed a classy way to show love.’

  ‘I said it in anger.’

  ‘Let me be clear. I have never, ever been spoken to in such a cheap manner in my life. I let you into my world. We had something together.’

  ‘We do.’

  ‘No, we don’t. If you could speak to me like that, I wonder how you think of me in your mind.’

  ‘I wanted to be close to you. Never let you go.’

  ‘You said “deti hai to de, varna kat le”. Does that sound like being close?’

  ‘It’s my useless friends, they provoked me. They said, sleep with her or else she’ll never be yours.’

  ‘You discussed this with your friends first?’

  ‘Not everything but. . .’

  ‘But stuff like “let me go fuck her today”.’

  Before I could respond she raised a hand to silence me. ‘I’m going to say something now. Listen carefully. Okay?’ she said, her voice shaky as she tried to maintain her composure.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘One, don’t ever try to talk to me. Two, we are not friends anymore. I have promised my friends and myself I will choose my friends carefully. Three, stop hounding me, it’s disturbing. I don’t want to tell my parents or the college authorities.’

  ‘Riya. . .’

  ‘Please go now,’ she said and folded her hands, as if pleading with me.

  I took one last look at her—the beautiful but angry and sad face, the long hair I had stroked, the lips I had kissed once—and turned around. I heard the sound of her footsteps get fainter as she walked away.

  12

  Six months later

  After my break-up, or half-break-up, with Riya, my personality changed. People in college started to call me SSS, or the Silent Saint of Stephen’s. I attended every class and sat in the front row. I took notes like a court stenographer. I never asked the professor any questions. I would sit with my friends in the residences but not contribute to the conversation. Initially, they tried to cheer me up. They gave me copies of Playboy and arranged booze parties to help me get over Riya. However, just like their earlier advice, their break-up cures were useless too. The only thing that helped somewhat was basketball. Every time I thought of her, I hit the court. Three hours of dribbling and shooting temporarily cured my heartache, if only because it left me physically exhausted. Frankly, I went to the courts in the hope she would come to practice. She never did. Perhaps her father had built her a court in the backyard of 100, Aurangzeb Road.

  Sometimes I lurked in the college corridors, waiting for her class to end. I stood far away and avoided eye contact. I would watch her come out of class, only to disappear into a crowd of friends. Once she did see me. She didn’t smile or turn away. She didn’t even look angry. She didn’t react at all. It killed me. If she had come forward and slapped me or yelled, I would have been okay. However, she looked right through me, as if I didn’t exist.

  Nights hit me the hardest. I couldn’t sleep. I lay on the same bed where I had messed it up with her. The same place where I had spoken like a Bhojpuri movie villain. I wished I had a time machine to undo my actions. I didn’t want a time machine to predict the stock market or buy property cheap. I only wanted it to un-say that sentence. I had said it in a combined state of horniness, bravado and stupidity. Well, it is also the state in which men are most of the time.

  I tossed and turned. I couldn’t sleep. I bounced my basketball on the room’s wall back and forth until the student in the adjacent room shouted curses. I studied my course books to distract myself. I found books in the library on psychology, relationships and love. Through these I tried to figure out women. Either the English was too tough or the books gave contradictory ideas. I ended up being more confused than ever. Women like to nurture and have long-term relationships, one study said. However, I had wanted exactly that. So why did the study fail to explain this? Anything I read about women in newspapers I connected with Riya. If an actress gave an interview saying she was moody, I nodded and felt that, yes, even Riya was moody.

  I had to get this girl out of my head. I couldn’t.

  A few months later it was my birthday. I sat with my friends in the cafeteria. As luck would have it, Riya entered at the same time with her friends. My friends wanted to see if she would wish me. They started singing, ‘Happy birthday to you, Madhav’, even as I cut a mince cutlet. The girls noticed but ignored us. Riya didn’t even flinch. My heart crumbled like the
mince cutlet.

  ‘You’re lucky. It’s best such an insensitive girl is out of your life,’ Raman said.

  One afternoon, after college ended, I was sitting outside on the main lawn. Students turned their gaze to the main gate as a car entered the college.

  It was a beautiful car. It looked expensive even from twenty metres away.

  ‘It’s a Bentley. Costs over two crores,’ a boy sitting close to me told his friend. A young man stepped out of the car. He wore shades. He walked as if he owned the college.

  Riya Somani emerged from the main building and walked towards the Bentley. I stood up and walked towards the driveway. I ensured I could not be seen; not that anyone was interested in me.

  The man’s face seemed familiar. Riya went up to him. They hugged. I noticed the man was an inch shorter than Riya.

  Rohan Chandak, the name popped into my head. What’s this asshole doing here? It’s amazing how quickly the mind switches from figuring out a situation to commenting on it.

  I had no idea why Rohan had come to college. Maybe he wanted to buy the building and turn it into a hotel. Well, that seemed unlikely as he didn’t enter the building. Both of them got into the Bentley and it drove off, with Riya’s BMW tailing Rohan’s car. The students in the lawns released collective oohs and aahs.

  ‘I also want a loaded boyfriend,’ I heard a girl near me say.

  ‘Is he her boyfriend?’ I asked her. I shouldn’t have but I did. Like I’d proved earlier, my impulse control is rather weak.

  ‘How do I know?’ she said and walked away.

  I could still smell the burning fumes from Rohan’s Bentley long after he had left. Or maybe it was my burning insides.

  I had to talk to Riya. I decided to do it during Harmony, the annual cultural festival of St. Stephen’s. It would be my final attempt to rescue our friendship. The festival had various cultural competitions such as choreography, music, debates and treasure hunts. Students, including the day-skis, stayed in the college until late at night. Riya had already won the music competition in the solo English vocals category. She was also taking part in Western choreography.

  I took my place in the audience early, sitting in the front row facing the makeshift choreography stage on the front lawns. Boys from all over Delhi University had gatecrashed. They sat at the right vantage points to ogle at the St. Stephen’s chicks. Some of these boys resembled men back home. They spoke loudly in Hindi. They whistled every time a pretty girl came on stage. Stephanians, of course, hated all this. We were way too dignified to express our lecherous feelings in such a public manner. We ogled nonetheless, but in a dignified way.