The World's Best Boyfriend

by Durjoy Datta

  ‘Dean wanted me to conduct a pep talk for the first-year students. Tell them about my glorious achievements and my struggles, you know. I would have found it hard not to talk about the dean’s stupidity and his wife’s massive breasts so I ran.’

  Dhruv shrugged, trying not to think about the dean’s wife and her massive breasts, but when you’re trying not to think about something you only think about it more. He got back to the glossy.

  ‘I’m just making sure you don’t get bored. Hey, by the way, I never noticed that scar on your right hand. It looks pretty badass,’ prodded Sanchit.

  ‘It’s a birthmark,’ deflected Dhruv.

  ‘Unless a baby actually came out of it, it is not a birth-mark, dude. I’m departmental rank 4. I ask questions from the first bench till the professors break down and take to heroin.’

  Dhruv sighed. ‘Long story.’

  ‘No offence, but your girlfriend’s hairy as a yak. They are probably making wigs out of her armpit hair and that’s going to take some time. Tell me your story.’

  Dhruv wanted to kick his teeth in but Sanchit’s skinny face only evoked pity, much like little National Geographic kids, only fairer.

  ‘A door banged on it.’

  ‘That’s a short story, not the long one.’

  ‘I banged the door on it,’ said Dhruv.

  ‘James Joyce’s Ulysses was 265,000 words and that was a long story and you’re shit but yours had just eleven words. I’m sure you can do better. Let me guess. Was it around the time your parents got separated?’

  ‘A little before that.’

  ‘You fit every cliché in the book, man. It’s like watching a bad soap and you are the intense, brooding hero with a heavy backstory. You’re an insult to every normal kid from a broken family.’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘Fine, fine. Tell me. Stop being a girl!’

  Dhruv waved his middle finger in Sanchit’s face. He didn’t say a word for the next ten minutes or so. Sanchit sat there calmly, staring at the wall in front of him, and Dhruv envied him for his stillness. Dhruv was always restless, bristling under his skin, always looking for confrontation, excitement, disappointment, he wanted life to fly at him, keep him occupied, unlike Sanchit who could sit and do nothing and be nothing.

  ‘I had to miss a cricket match,’ Dhruv finally started.

  ‘I’m listening,’ said Sanchit.

  ‘I was seven. It was a Sunday morning. They had been fighting a lot. I knew they wouldn’t talk about it if I stayed in the house, if I could just make them laugh or cry or be concerned or anything that would keep them together. I wanted to stay in the house.’

  ‘What about the match?’ Sanchit asked.

  ‘My friends kept shouting from below, “Dhruv! Dhruv! We have a match, we have a match,” and that I couldn’t ditch them at the last moment. They were right. I had led them to the finals of the local tournament and deserting them would have meant sure loss. They were sulking outside. So I slammed the door on my wrist.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘The doctor said it was a hairline fracture. My parents sat there crying for me, together. Seeing my hand in the cast, the opponents agreed to postpone the finals till my wrist healed, and my team was ecstatic.’

  ‘Not sure if you’re a sorry bastard or an evil mastermind.’

  ‘Let’s go outside,’ said Dhruv when a few more people walked into the waiting room. Sanchit lit a cigarette and offered Dhruv one. Dhruv took it.

  Sanchit was now staring at the poster of a C-grade movie stuck on the wall in front of them. ‘You could have said no to Ritika today. Your raccoon girlfriend could have come with someone else.’

  ‘I can’t say no to her.’

  ‘You can’t keep everyone happy all the time, Dhruv. It’s not your responsibility. Who the fuck cares if you lost that match? And if your parents eventually got divorced? Who eventually lost?’

  The tone of the conversation had suddenly changed and it unnerved Dhruv and he wanted to run. ‘It doesn’t matter how it ended. But I can’t be the one who fucks it up and neither will I allow the other person to fuck it up.’

  ‘Did you win the match?’ asked Sanchit.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you win the next year?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Dhruv. ‘I didn’t play the next year.’

  They smoked in silence. Little did Dhruv know this was the calm before the storm, that Aranya had been plotting her revenge while he waited for Ritika to get over with her business.

  Dhruv, Sanchit and Ritika came back to college, riding triple on his motorcycle, and Sanchit stared at Ritika’s legs throughout the ride.

  I Love u Rachu

  31

  Aranya had had her cake, red velvet no less, and she had been waiting for Dhruv in the canteen for the last three hours, plotting every second of her revenge.

  People think of debaters as people with the gift of the gab and spontaneity and that might be true, but the pioneers are ones who plan every detail to the last second, who control the entire narrative and sit there smiling as it slowly unfolds. And with revenge, it just makes more sense to plan it out and understand the ramifications and how it will rupture the future, than just react in a knee jerk and not know how it will all turn out.

  It was already seven-thirty and the canteen was deserted, the helps were cleaning the tables, stacking up chairs, and Aranya twiddled her thumbs nervously. Nervousness is always good, it keeps you aware, she had heard somewhere. She had done what she was about to do on Skype previously, on a call, on texts but never while looking into the eyes of a pervert.

  It was seven forty-five when she saw Dhruv walk in with Ritika and Sanchit, his arm firmly around Ritika’s shoulders. They sat on a table at the far corner of the canteen. She hated Ritika’s hot pants, an anomaly in an engineering college like theirs, a blasphemy of sorts, and like ‘how-could-she!’

  She reminded herself of Dhruv’s words and the missed meals and the little slips in class participations and gathered them all in a little snowball that she intended to transform into a fucking avalanche to drown him out.

  And it was showtime. It was her stage and the audience was in ridiculous hot pants. She strode towards Dhruv as Dhruv looked at her walking towards him.

  She cocked her head to one side and said, ‘Hi, I want to talk to you.’

  ‘I don’t,’ said Dhruv and waved her away.

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked Aranya and braced herself. She was mush inside. It reminded her of her first debate; she was a nervous wreck, close to a breakdown, but outside she appeared a rock. She reminded herself. Be a rock. She bent over and breathed her words into his ear. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to talk?’ If there’s one thing Aranya could do to seduce, it was to modulate her voice, and right now she could have been a voiceover artist to leading porn stars. ‘Is that because I’m ugly? Or is it because you think my intelligence turns you on a little? Is that because you were in love with me once? Or are you still in love with me? The girl who destroyed you forever?’ Her lips hovered dangerously close to his ear. ‘Don’t tell me you don’t like a little challenge? A little intimidation? The feeling of your balls and your cock being in control of a girl. Aren’t you one of those boys who like their hair to be pulled back and slapped a little?’ So predictable, she thought. Dhruv reminded her of Sameer and his rodeo impression on Skype. Dhruv’s breathing got heavier, just a little, but enough. Say the word cock to a guy and he’s yours. She could see Dhruv freeze in his chair. She made her next move, a dangerous one, like throwing an unchecked statistic at the interjector hoping he or she wouldn’t catch your bluff. She placed her hand on his thigh. ‘Don’t tell me you wouldn’t like it if I maybe . . . tie you up? Hit you across your face? And you hit me right back? Don’t tell me you haven’t imagined that? You have, haven’t you? You have touched yourself thinking of it.’ She moved her hand towards his crotch and could disgustingly find Dhruv harden. ‘Don’t tell me you’re not thinking about
it right now? You are, aren’t you?’ Dhruv was looking at her, like a leashed puppy, helpless. And she grabbed his crotch and he was hard. ‘You’re thinking of me, aren’t you? Tell me you are.’ Dhruv nodded his head, just a trillionth of a fraction, even a slow motion camera wouldn’t catch the movement, but in moments like these that’s enough and Aranya pushed him away and took a step back and smiled derisively at him.

  ‘SCREW YOU, DHRUV,’ bellowed Aranya. ‘FUCK YOU. Look down, you pathetic excuse for a guy. Look at that. You’re fucking hard, Dhruv. You’re just a helpless boy, Dhruv, and you dared to cross my path. You call me hideous? You call me an ugly, loathsome toad? It took me just a few words to get you salivating. JUST LOOK AT YOU.’ The blood had rushed to her face and she was aware that it was her war face, a face no one had fucked around with. She pointed a finger at his face which went pale. ‘So the next time you dare to even think that I’m ugly, think of this moment when I made your world come crashing down on you, when you were powerless, the moment when you agreed to cheat on your pretty girlfriend. Remember this moment because this defines you.’ Aranya wiped the frown on her face and smiled. She turned her gaze towards Ritika, smiled kindly and said, ‘All yours. Nice legs, though.’

  She strode off with a smile on her face, fully aware of the three pairs of eyes on her.

  In her hostel room she washed her hands and sanitized them, and then ate three oily burgers to wipe out the memory of the battle and savoured the victory.

  I Love u Rachu

  32

  ‘It’s not really her fault, dude,’ said Sanchit.

  As a part of Dhruv’s mourning process, they were sharing a joint, and a Pepsi bottle topped with Old Monk on the roof of the hostel.

  Ritika wasn’t receiving his calls, wasn’t attending classes and was crying her heart out, letting the entire world know what a nice fucking guy Dhruv was.

  ‘Tell me something I don’t know, asshole.’

  Dhruv had spent the last five days in a drunken haze, dialling her number over and over again, waiting on the pavement facing her first floor hostel window, sending her long texts and numerous e-mails begging for another chance. He felt like shit for letting Ritika down. He even toyed with the idea of slitting his wrists to prove a point but the mess that would follow deterred him.

  ‘You have always led her on, you didn’t tell me you and she had a thing in school!’ Ritika had complained.

  But I called her ugly, how is that leading her on, Dhruv had argued.

  She turned you on, how can I trust you any longer, Ritika had cried.

  Sanchit unscrewed the cap of another bottle of Old Monk and poured it into the empty Pepsi bottle.

  ‘I’m in love with Aranya. She’s my dream woman,’ said Sanchit.

  ‘She fucked my happiness, dude. Ritika’s never going to forgive me for this. How the fuck am I any different from my fuck-all father, fucking shit.’

  ‘You’re drunk.’

  ‘I’m drunk? You are the fucking one who just said you fucking love that bitch!’

  ‘Mind your language there, Dhruv. I’m married to her in my head,’ quipped Sanchit.

  ‘Is that why you’re watching that?’ asked Dhruv, pointing to Bookworm Bitches—Megan Goes to School video playing on his laptop.

  ‘Fine. Let me prove it to you,’ said Sanchit and clicked on the porn folder which was labelled as Important Documents and paraded his painstakingly procured collection, now categorized and cross-referenced.

  He pressed the ALT key and his finger lingered over the DEL key. He asked, ‘Should I?’ And before Dhruv could answer, he pressed the key, a bar appeared and slowly, hundreds of pixelated naked bodies disappeared. ‘See? Not even a second thought. Aranya is hot. All my fantasies are going to revolve around her now.’

  Dhruv didn’t see the point of arguing. They drank and smoked silently, Dhruv blissfully unaware of the approaching mid-semester examinations. It was the time when the hostels remained abuzz with activity till early mornings, study groups were formed and the dynamics of friendships changed.

  They ran out of alcohol and lay on the rooftop, staring at the sky as if there were stars visible to appreciate. Dhruv’s phone had run out of battery from the incessant calling.

  ‘Should I get her name tattooed? Do you think that would work?’ asked Dhruv, once he felt a little less hammered.

  ‘Get it in Chinese so that you can fool your next girlfriend. Even the Chinese don’t understand their script.’

  ‘I’m not breaking up,’ said Dhruv.

  ‘Have you decided your kids’ names yet?’

  ‘When the right time comes, then why not,’ answered Dhruv, the ridiculousness of the question and the answer ringing in his ears.

  ‘You’re stupid as hell, man. You have got to be kidding me if you think you and Ritika are meant for life. I don’t think you’re even sad. You’re just acting sad!’

  ‘Why would you say that?’ asked Dhruv, curious.

  ‘For one, you’re twenty and there are ten more years for you to think from your dick. And secondly, how’s it love? Love’s not waiting for a couple of hours outside a parlour reading gossip magazines while she’s getting rid of her fur. Love’s when you can say fuck off, I’m not coming, and I don’t care you’re a hairy mess for I like your hairy mess.’

  ‘That sounds like a fetish,’ said Dhruv.

  ‘I’m no Freud but you might be the first guy who suffers from the opposite of commitment phobia. Commitment philia?’

  ‘This conversation is over.’

  ‘Want to watch some porn together?’

  ‘I hate porn.’

  ‘Don’t ever say that again or we might not be friends any more,’ said Sanchit.

  ‘Random girls fucking random boys for money? I’m not into that. It’s just not my thing.’

  ‘Aw! Don’t tell me you think about their families and their boyfriends and their kids?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘This conversation is over, Dhruv. We are not friends.’

  ‘We were never friends.’

  ‘. . .’

  ‘. . .’

  Dhruv continued, ‘Morever, two men watching porn together is gay.’

  ‘What’s wrong in being gay now?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Good.’

  Dhruv sat up and drank the last sip from the bottle of Pepsi. ‘Didn’t you delete all your porn?’

  ‘Which self-respecting guy doesn’t keep a backup? But I did delete it without a second thought and you still don’t have the tattoo on yourself,’ said Sanchit and smiled. ‘Aranya is hot.’

  I Love u Rachu

  33

  Aranya’s life had crawled back to being awesome and unfit; samosas and cupcakes were being eaten without guilt, questions about thermodynamics were being answered in a flash, her dominance in class participation and internal class tests was on an all-time high, and most importantly, Raghuvir was happy about her comeback. He had even expressed interest in enrolling her as a student researcher in one of his projects, which was the kind of thing that turned Aranya on. It was a montage of life throwing good things at her.

  She sat in her usual seat, the first bench, alone and sharpening her pencils, smiling. The first register of the semester was filled up and today she was breaking in a new register. The smell of new registers, and sharpened pencils always filled her with a sense of eagerness and anticipation. It was Raghuvir’s class today and she hoped he would walk in wearing a niqab for her to concentrate on his words better.

  More often than not Aranya was content placing herself at the centre of the universe and not caring about the insignificant people orbiting around her, but today was different. On the stairs outside the class, Ritika sat crying, bawling, snot running from her nose, looking like nothing anyone would love. In the past few days, she had become rather ghostly. She had lost weight and looked pale, one could find her standing unblinking on empty balconies and walking listlessly through empty corridors l
ate at night, and since Aranya lived right next door, she heard howling from her room every night. Aranya told herself that it wasn’t her fault but Ritika’s and that the girl was cuckoo, and it would all be over and time would exorcize the ghost soon. But today she took it on herself to be the priest and show her the cross.

  She walked out of the class, cursing her feminine instinct.

  ‘Ritika?’ said Aranya.

  ‘Get lost!’ snapped Ritika, her face streaked with tears.

  If this wasn’t an example of overreaction, she didn’t know what was.

  ‘I’m sorry it had to be like this between the two of you, but you have to know that there’s nothing between the two of us,’ said Aranya, trying hard to sound concerned but this entire situation was a little too stupid to be taken seriously.

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘Well, if there’s something between Dhruv and me its unbridled hatred, anger, and related synonyms. I would happily see his body in a blender.’

  ‘But I just can’t let go of whatever happened that day,’ said Ritika and started to cry like a child again.

  ‘Ritika. You need to get your shit together.’

  ‘And you need to keep your hands off my boyfriend’s crotch!’ retorted Ritika.

  ‘I would rather dip my hands in acid.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk to you.’

  ‘What do you want to do then, Ritika? Quite frankly, I’m starting to feel guilty about what I did and I want to apologize and get it over with. And I need you to look at me and say that it’s okay,’ said Aranya.

  And then, just like that, without warning, a hand came rushing to meet her face, and her fat cheeks reverberated with the impact and her teeth clattered. The slap reminded her of her father, who’s favourite pastime was hitting her.

  Aranya gathered herself, clenched her fingers into a fist to hit the bitch’s face, but then thought she probably deserved the slap and took a deep breath and said, ‘Okay, maybe I deserved that. But you need to move on from here now. Or I could slap you and it would go on and then I will win when I sit on your face.’