by Durjoy Datta
Avanti disconnects the line and plugs in the earphones again. She can’t wait to start being a flight attendant and fly out of Delhi and she thinks it’s not entirely because of her father or her not wanting to study anymore. It’s also because she doesn’t want to be around Shekhar anymore. She wants to run away from him. She hopes that with time, Shekhar will stop treating her like a piece of property and will forget her.
She watches Devrat sing in the small video, his eyes always slightly watery, wide-open, like they are searching for something, like a little pug’s eyes. She feels better all of a sudden. And just like that she’s no longer scared. She sends Devrat a mail from one of the twenty fake accounts she has created to thank him for his songs.
‘Fuck you, Shekhar,’ she mutters.
Two
devrat
It’s a dark room, filled with the stench of cigarettes and alcohol; the windows are closed. Devrat has changed five apartments in the last seven months and he doesn’t think he will last in this one for very long either. Sooner or later, the landlord will discover the filth, the drugs, and his sloth-like living standards and throw him out, with all of his six T-shirts, two pairs of jeans, his guitars and his harmonica. And again he would lose himself amongst the many others in the streets of Kolkata. The city is crumbling, like him, like the people walking with him; there is no hope.
He thinks of ordering food but after the rent and the security, he is left with just over six hundred rupees. But that’s not the worst part. The worst part is that he is out of cigarettes and without a smoke, words don’t come to him and without his words, he’s incomplete.
But what’s the difference? No one listens to his songs anyway.
He lights the last cigarette, takes long drags, and keeps the smoke inside him till only a small sliver of smoke pours out of his nose. He crushes the butt and runs his finger on the strings idly. Melody has always come easy to him; it’s the words that are the problem.
It’s been five months since he has uploaded any videos of his songs on his YouTube channel, which has all of two hundred subscribers, most of them accidental. But some of them, and he remembers them by name, are regular followers and have asked time and again as to when they can expect his new song. They even converse between themselves if the singer, Devrat, has left the singing business and is working now as an engineer or worse, dead. A few of them mail Devrat regularly, thanking him for his music, but apart from that he doesn’t really command a huge following. He replies to them whenever he’s in a mood to do so.
He has not been busy for the last few months. He’s been depressed, drunk and defeated . . . in love. In love that was true and undying and defying and strange and senseless and passionate and stupid, like every love is. He thought Arundhati was the one he would flee this city with, but like all great love stories it wasn’t to be. Like many others, and like him, Arundhati was always confused, the confusion rising from insecurity about what the future might hold rather than acceptance of what he really was. Like in all Bollywood movies, she was too rich for him, or he was too poor for her. And it still mattered even though they were only twenty-one-year olds.
Three months back, Arundhati got engaged to a nice Bengali guy whom her parents chose for her and she gladly accepted him. The guy is diametrically opposed to what he is. He is an investment banker, belongs to a family of doctors, lives in a palatial house in Salt Lake and has never been in an apartment that has a washroom smaller than the entire flat Devrat has to himself.
Devrat contemplates if he should get himself another pack of cigarettes or if he should sleep but the phone rings and it takes him an eternity to find the damned instrument under the mess. He’s surprised how much he could dirty his room even with his limited belongings. It’s his manager on the other line. Actually, he is the manager of fifty other acts like him and it’s his responsibility to get them gigs, possibly paid gigs in Kolkata and around. But since music is something you do because you love to do it, quite like writing, or journalism, you don’t expect to get paid. And moreover, electronica is in. Female DJs are in. Real live music is out. David Guetta is in. Stereophonics is out. Despite the fading fortune of small-time musicians like Devrat, Sumit, his manager, works steadfastly to get these musicians an odd gig a month. After all, till the time he signs a big band or a label, which doesn’t seem like a possibility, his income is tied to theirs.
‘Hey! Where are you? Thatplace Else today, 8 p.m. I sent you ten reminders. Don’t you check your phone or what? They have put big posters and shit, man. They are looking forward to your performance! The crowd is going to be insane!’ Sumit shrieks. His energy is unbelievable and it’s hard to imagine that he is thirty-five. He makes money off it but there is no denying that he loves music and tries to promote good music in the best way he can. He never signs a bad musician. Never.
The worst part about the Kolkata music scene is that it has too much talent for any one city to nurture and pay for, especially a poor city like this.
‘I didn’t get your reminders. I don’t think I am going to make it today,’ he sighs.
‘FUCK YOU, man. It’s ten thousand bucks for four hours. You’re not going to get this anywhere else in Kolkata! You got to come. And this is Thatplace Else, the mecca of good music. Do you have any idea how rarely they bring in someone to perform solo here? The crowd is so you. They love you here. Who knows, you might even find yourself a girlfriend here! You should see the girls there, man.’
‘You’re married, Sumit.’
‘That’s why I’m banking on you, Dev,’ says Sumit. ‘You’re twenty-one. Stop behaving like you’re already a star on your way down. Get laid tonight. Do what fuck-all failed musicians do! Do your gig and then get someone home.’
‘I’m not into that, and you know that. Anyway, I will be there,’ he says and disconnects the call.
Sumit texts him that he would be there to pick him up at seven and would appreciate it if he took a bath and put on some rockstar-like clothes. It’s still eight hours to go and he realizes it would be difficult to power through the day without another pack of cigarettes. He picks himself up, drags his body to the shower and stands listlessly under the pouring hot water. Despite repeated pleas that turned into threats, Devrat has not managed to switch off the geyser for a single minute since the time he has moved in.
He dries himself off and puts on a T-shirt with the washed-out graphic of his favourite band, The Stereophonics. They were the ones who had inspired his hobby into a compulsion, a passion into a career which wasn’t the most promising but satisfying. In retrospect, Devrat wasn’t only in love with the band and their rusty, jagged music but also the enigmatic yet boyish, never-ageing lead singer and guitarist, Kelly Jones.
When he was thirteen, he still remembers, girls used to crowd around him as he imitated Kelly Jones’s whisky vocals. He basked in the attention of girls in short skirts with pink cheeks and felt like he had arrived. Devrat Roy was the barometer of coolness in general.
The streets were empty when he left his flat to get some cigarettes. Kolkata shuts down in the afternoon for a nap of a few hours after it has had its elaborate rice and fish meal. Of all the things that have held back this city, laziness is at the forefront. The city loves to argue, loves raging political discussions, holds on steadfastly to its culture and its numerous heroes, and is ridiculously proud of its rich past and dismissive of its dark future. Under the garb of intellectualism, Kolkata is full of people with crushed ambitions, diminished hopes and no business sense. The city bears a defeated look.
He buys two packets of Wills Navy Cut, a brand he has smoked since the twelfth standard. For the year he was with Arundhati, he had stopped smoking, but now he’s back to the habit with a vengeance, thinking of it as a quiet rebellion against the break-up. After smoking five in a row, he drifts off to sleep.
It’s seven when he wakes up and checks his phone which is flooded with misse
d calls and texts from Sumit. He calls back and Sumit replies with the choicest abuses in three languages he knows and asks him to get ready in fifteen minutes.
He shaves, puts on his shoes, chooses between three T-shirts and waits for Sumit outside his apartment building. Fifteen minutes later, Sumit and Devrat are negotiating the traffic to Thatplace Else, Park Street, Kolkata. Sumit is on the phone handing down a verbal spanking to a new band, which got too drunk on a gig and left it halfway to join the revellers.
Sumit parks the car and leads Devrat through the back entrance of the club into the tiny office of the club manager. The manager has seen quite a few big stars in music over the last two years that the club has grown in prominence. He knows almost everyone on a first name basis. He smiles when Devrat walks in and Devrat smiles back. Earlier, Devrat used to play as a back-up singer for an act at Thatplace Else. He was a big hit amongst the girls back then, his floppy hair, his sharp nose and his big eyes were a big draw.
‘All set?’ the manager asks and offers him whisky which Devrat promptly accepts.
‘As usual,’ Devrat says, smiles back, and gulps the whisky. It’s good for Devrat’s nerves.
‘All yours,’ he says and instructs his office boy to help Devrat set up his instruments.
Devrat leaves with the boy. The pub is still relatively empty with only a handful of people drinking and chatting idly. He starts setting up his instruments and looks over his shoulder, wondering if Arundhati knows about his gig. Two years back, it was Thatplace Else where they’d first met, talked about music, and slowly fell in love.
He is sure he would see some of the familiar faces. Thatplace Else is meticulous about informing people of the schedule of the gigs and if Sumit is to be believed, there were people waiting to hear him again.
As he does his first sound check, he feels his heart split open. And then it settles. He mistook a girl for Arundhati.
‘Check. Check.’
He flashes a thumbs-up to the manager who is now on the floor. He is a fan. Everyone who has ever listened to Devrat sing is a fan. Only if Devrat sang a little more.
Three
avanti
Out of habit, Avanti checks the newspaper for gigs, hoping Devrat would land in Delhi for a performance. Nothing. She checks Devrat’s Myspace and Facebook page and there are no updates there as well. His last update is quite old. It was a song he had composed which revolved around the lost city of Dwarka. The other girls in her hostel who heard the song thought nothing of it, but she thought the song was about lost love and not the lost city.
‘You’re just in love with a cute songwriter,’ the girls used to say.
She keeps refreshing her Twitter timeline as she eats her breakfast, Kellogg’s cornflakes and cold milk. The selfie she uploaded today morning on Twitter tagging it ‘lazy morning’ has been favourited twenty times. She doesn’t upload pictures on Facebook because . . . well, Shekhar throws a tantrum. Her father is solving the crossword; he’s already done with the Sudoku in the three newspapers that lay on the table. He doesn’t initiate any conversation as well. She checks her mailbox to see if Devrat has replied to any of the mails she keeps sending him from her dummy accounts. He hasn’t. For the past few months, there’s absolutely no activity on Devrat’s pages and it saddens Avanti a little. He’s been like a drug to her. If he doesn’t respond for long, she gets restless.
‘Do . . . do you need any money?’ her father stammers a little later and she shakes her head. She has an ATM card that her father gave her when she first came and she hasn’t really spent anything from it although she has been wanting to since the money her grandmother gave her is slowly running out.
‘When’s the t . . . raining starting?’ he asks again.
‘Tomorrow,’ she says, looks up and smiles.
‘The maid will come at twelve,’ mumbles her father, still not making eye contact.
Avanti nods. Her father is still looking into the newspaper struggling to find a five-letter word in 21 across as he eats the soggy cornflakes, his legs constantly in a nervous shiver. He smells of talcum powder and Keo Karpin hair oil and looks quintessentially middle-aged, just like a mathematics professor at a government college should look like. She is not angry at her father for driving her mother to leave him, she’s just unsure of the man sitting in front of her. She hasn’t seen much of him growing up. She has just heard about him from her grandmother. And in her grandmother’s version he was a gentle, warm man. That was before he went slightly mad, and got consumed in his obsession with mathematics, and her mother had no option but to leave him.
Once in the room, she wishes she had continued the conversation on the dining table. She hears the door close and realizes that her father has left for college.
Bored, she walks into the living room and switches on the television. She has started to miss Dehradun a little more now—her friends, their friends, their friends and her mutual friends, her mutual friends’ boyfriends. There was no end to people she knew there, and everyone knew her. She wishes she had someone to talk to right now. Nothing deep, just talk. Her grandmother often remarked that Avanti couldn’t go to sleep unless she’s done with her quota of ten thousand spoken words every day.
She watches ten minutes of a soap where the main protagonist and antagonist are crying over spilled milk. No pun.
‘What’s wrong with these people who make soaps!’
She updates her Facebook status. Five guys respond to it. They drop names of English sitcoms they watch (in wrong grammar of course). Thirty-three guys like the status. Including Shekhar, who writes, ‘Stp wtchin em, baby’. Avanti cringes. A lot of guys comment. She’s half-expecting Shekhar to call and blast her for being an attention whore. But thankfully, her phone doesn’t ring.
She opens the cabinet to find movies she could watch and finds none. Instead, she finds a stack of video games arranged alphabetically and cross-referenced according to their genre and their year of release. Borderline crazy, she thinks, and closes the cabinet. The next cabinet is brimming with comic books. The next one has science journals. And books on conspiracy theories. There are still around twenty to go and there are three rooms she hasn’t checked yet. She wonders what her crazy father hides behind those doors. Skulls? Knives?
‘Your father was a great mathematician till one unsolved question made him crazy,’ her grandmother used to say.
She thinks, what if her father was more than just a crazy mathematician? What if he’s like Dexter? A crime-fighting mathematician? That would be cool! Also impossible, for her father wears loose trousers with sports shoes. Hardly an attire for a suave crime fighter!
She walks into her father’s study and it’s a mess. Unlike the rest of the house, which is comparatively clean, this room looks like it has never been cleaned. There are books stacked on books, notes, journals and stray papers strewn all around, blackboards filled with numbers and letters in illegible combinations. He’s still crazy!
She leaves the room, goes to the kitchen and cooks herself some Maggi in the microwave, the Indian snack that can replace any meal and can be had any time of the day. The noodles are a little overcooked and they drip out of the bowl. She pours bright red tomato ketchup all over the Maggi noodles.
She has just opened one of her father’s comics, when her phone rings. It’s Shekhar.
‘Hi. Are you home?’ Shekhar asks as soon she picks up the call.
‘Yes, why? There were no classes to attend today so I stayed home.’
‘Where is your house?’ he asks.
‘It’s near Dhaula Kuan, why?’
‘I am in Delhi and I am coming to see you. Give me your exact address and I will be there in an hour.’
She’s already a little scared. When they used to date, Avanti would make sure they never met alone in a closed space. She is still apprehensive about meeting him.
‘Umm . . . Dad
is home and he doesn’t let me go out. He’s very strict. He’s hovering around me as we speak. I don’t think I can see you today. I’m sorry, Shekhar,’ she mumbles.
‘You can come out of the house for a few minutes. Just tell him a friend is here to see you. I really need to see you. And I need to see you now,’ he grumbles.
‘I can’t do that. He is very protective and even if I tell him, he would ask the friend to come and meet him too. And my grandmother has already told him about you, so it’s better that you don’t come. Also I’m down and I have cramps. I don’t think I can walk down. I also have a fever,’ she fibs nervously.
There’s brief pause from the other side. ‘Oh, okay. Take care. I will see you tomorrow, then,’ he says, not giving up.
‘I start work from tomorrow, Shekhar.’
‘Miss it,’ growls Shekhar.
‘I can’t!’
‘Oh, sure you can. It’s a shitty job. I will give you the money. Just meet me. Don’t try to avoid me, Avanti. And who do you think you’re uploading these pictures for? You think I haven’t seen them? You think I wouldn’t know just because I’m not on Twitter? You have started dating someone, haven’t you? Give me your passwords.’
‘I can’t, Shekhar. And I haven’t started dating anyone.’
‘Then give the passwords to me! I want to see who you are talking to. Just give them to me, you . . .’
‘I’m sorry,’ says Avanti.
‘I’m sure you’re fucking someone, aren’t you?’ shouts Shekhar. ‘I just knew it! I just fucking knew it. That’s why Delhi, right? You’re just a fucking slut, Avanti.’
‘Shekhar!’ Avanti has almost started to cry.
‘JUST GIVE ME YOUR FUCKING ADDRESS. I WILL COME TO SEE YOU!’ shouts Shekhar. ‘You bitch, you’re sleeping behind my back. Who was there when you needed someone? I found the woman who raped you. I did it for you! I waited for two years to get you and two days in Delhi and you’re fucking someone else!’ shouts Shekhar. Avanti can almost see Shekhar’s reddened face, the popping veins on his forehead and neck, and she throws the phone away. The phone hits the wall and the battery spills out.
