by Durjoy Datta
‘So, season eight?’ she asked, fiddling through the rack of CDs.
‘Whichever would do.’
‘The Man with the Long Stick?’ she asked.
‘No, that is a little boring.’
‘The Turkey?’
‘No, that we have seen a million times.’
‘The Gas Burst?’
‘Umm … no.’ I shook my head. ‘Why don’t we watch the fifth season, the third or the fourth episode?’
‘Why didn’t you say it in the first place?’ she said, a little miffed.
‘I like it when you ask.’
‘Drama queen.’
She hit the play button. It was probably the hundredth time we were watching this episode, but I didn’t mind. Every time, it was funnier than the last time. I had tried watching those sitcoms alone, but they were never as much fun as they were with her. She snuggled up to me, passed on the popcorn and closed her eyes. ‘What do you think will happen tomorrow?’ she asked.
‘You will get the job, that’s what,’ I said.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. There’s absolutely no competition. You have worked nights on an internship. No one does that. You will be their first choice, Avantika.’
She felt a bit relaxed and hugged me tighter.
The next day was pretty exciting for interns like her who were expecting a pre-placement offer. Which meant a few interns will go back with an assured job in hand with still a year to go for college to end.
Avantika fancied her chances.
I couldn’t wait to go back to college. It had been two months that I had been going to that monstrous building made out of steel and glass, wearing a suffocating tie, and I couldn’t take it any more. Avantika, on the other hand, had been hyperventilating since the morning. We didn’t exchange a single word till the time we reached office for the last day of our internship.
‘It will be okay,’ I assured her.
It wasn’t until afternoon that the managers called all of us and gave us an extensive review on how each one of us had done during the internship. The reviews for Avantika and Kabir stood out and their managers couldn’t stop gloating over their dedication and the hard work they had put in. I slept through most of it. I just wanted to hear whether they would offer Avantika a job or not. That’s all I cared for. The conference ended and we all walked out. We had expected that they would announce the names of the interns they had chosen for a job but they didn’t. They said they needed more time to decide since everyone was so brilliant. Obviously, they weren’t talking about me because my manager described my performance as ‘he didn’t miss deadlines’. He was a prick anyway.
‘What do you think of the chances?’ she asked.
‘You will get through. Did you not hear what he said? You were brilliant, and I didn’t hear him say these words for anyone else.’
‘You are just being sweet,’ she said. ‘Even Kabir’s manager was so gung-ho about him.’
‘Why would I be sweet?’
‘Because that’s what you are,’ she answered. ‘I’m so nervous. I think I will pass out.’ She kept chewing on her painted nails. ‘Deb, do you think we can go to the human resources department and ask for the cheques of our stipends?’
‘Is that what you want to do on your last day in this office?’ I asked.
‘What do you have in mind?’ Avantika asked. Silly question, I thought.
A little later, we were walking to the conference room, nervous and sweating. The people in the cubicles who looked at us as we walked past them had no idea what was on our minds. The walk of shame lasted an hour and my heart was thumping. We bolted the door behind us.
‘What if we get caught? This is not good,’ she said.
‘I know,’ I answered and she put her hands across me. ‘But this is my revenge for whatever the internship put me through.’
‘They paid you while you sat at my desk doing nothing.’
‘Oh, shut up,’ I grumbled. ‘Don’t kill my anger. I’m really angry and I become a really good kisser when I’m angry.’
‘Why haven’t I ever felt that?’ She chuckled.
I pulled her close. ‘Whatever.’
The projector of the room was still running. Avantika killed the lights and darkness engulfed us. We were bat-shit scared, but the thrill of making out in an office conference room couldn’t have been ignored.
Half an hour later, as we lay on the floor of the conference room, exhausted, she said, ‘Let’s go away, Deb.’
‘Go away? Where?’
‘Anywhere? Somewhere far from here. There are still five days to go for college and we have nothing to do.’
‘We can just stay at my place and do nothing.’
‘That’s boring,’ she said. ‘Let’s go to Goa? It’s not that far! I have been so tense with the internship and the pre-placement offer. I deserve a break, don’t I?’
‘Are you serious?’ I asked her because in the past two months I had suggested the same about three thousand times.
She rested her head on my shoulder. ‘I’m serious.’
‘Goa it is then! I just have a lot of packing to do,’ I mumbled.
We smiled. Soon, we realized that we couldn’t lay around naked in the conference room much longer. We got up, checked each other’s necks for love bites, kissed each other one more time and headed back to our seats. A victorious smile broke out on my face.
4
I was really excited about the Goa plan, but packing weighed it down and I was more hassled than excited. Packing is not a very cool or a masculine thing to do. I got irritated in a while and called her up for help. My clothes were strewn all over the bed, the dining table, the washroom … they were everywhere, and I didn’t know where to start. Avantika had already packed and was on her way to my place. I panicked, grabbed hold of all the clothes and stuffed them inside two suitcases, and there were still boxers, socks and trousers, waiting to be folded and packed. Somehow my clothes had expanded during the two-month stay and wouldn’t fit in the two suitcases they had come in. I gave up. It was a lost cause.
‘How much more time will you need to pack, Deb?’ she asked as the cab driver piled up five of her seven suitcases neatly over one another in the drawing room.
‘Avantika? Exactly how many clothes do you have?’
‘Leave that,’ she snapped and paid the cab driver.
She was positively shocked when she entered my flat; she looked around like she had stepped in a post-war Nazi camp with bodies lying around, decomposing. It was a rotting bachelor’s pad, and I had done well to keep her away from it during our internship.
‘This smells like a rotting crime scene,’ she grumbled.
‘Why do you think I spend more time at your flat than mine?’ I asked. She was rolling up her sleeves. ‘You don’t have to bother with that, Avantika. Let’s just pack and leave.’
It was already too late; she was already mopping. She was an obsessive cleanliness freak. A speck of dust and she would rush to dust the whole room, one soiled pair of boxers in one corner of the room, and she would make it her agenda to get my whole wardrobe washed. The only reason why my room in the MDI hostel was probably the cleanest of all rooms, including the girls’ rooms and excluding hers, was Avantika.
‘Deb, is this how you pack?’ She yanked open the suitcases and the clothes spilled over. It was like the suitcase threw up all over her. ‘And you have mixed all your stuff. These are so smelly. And don’t just sit around there. Come and help me with this.’
I walked up and pretended to fold clothes and jammed them into suitcases.
‘You are doing nothing, Deb. Just go and do whatever you want to do,’ she said angrily. Not wanting to piss her off more, I just sat there and looked at her as she neatly segregated the clothes and then placed them in different bags and suitcases, her face constantly crumpled due to the ungodly smell.
‘It’s insane that you can look so great even while you’re packing clothes into a su
itcase,’ I remarked.
‘Shut up and don’t distract me,’ she said. I could sense her smiling even as she pretended to be angry.
‘I am done,’ she said.
The bags and suitcases were done, the wardrobes were empty, the toiletries and the shoes had been packed, the utensils had been washed and the flat now looked habitable; it also stank less somehow.
‘So, we leave now?’ I asked.
‘In a while,’ she said. ‘Let me catch some breath first.’ She flopped down beside me. ‘You’re by far the dirtiest boy I have ever seen.’ She breathed heavily.
I leaned in to kiss her but she slapped me away. ‘Your mouth stinks of dead rat. Did you even brush today?’ She scowled.
‘I did!’
‘You still smell like shit.’ She laughed.
‘Why don’t you simply say you don’t want to kiss me?’
‘Didn’t I do that just this morning?’
She pulled me by the collar and planted a long one on my lips. And as it happened every time, bolts of electricity ran through my spine as she pulled me deeper inside her mouth. Her sweet lips and rampaging tongue turned my world upside down every time they touched mine. She let me go while she still stared into my eyes.
‘You taste terrible.’
‘But you seem to like it.’
‘I love it.’
The plan to Goa was cancelled, like every other plan. There was never a better plan than just being in her arms. She told me that she was tired and I told her that we should just hug each other, sleep and not leave the bed for the next five days. Avantika nodded like a little child and buried her head into my chest.
‘So we are not going anywhere then, are we?’ she asked, her eyes twinkling.
‘Does it look like we are going?’
‘Are we just sleeping?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ I said and made her lie down on a pillow.
‘Where are you going? I need someone to hug,’ she said adorably and my heart melted in unrecognizable blobs.
‘I will just come.’
‘Okay,’ she said, rubbed her face on the pillow, closed her eyes and smiled.
I took a mental note—burn the pillow, she loves it. I returned with a ring I had bought for her with the stipend of our first months’ internship. My friends advised me against getting her a ring because of the obvious symbolic connotations of buying a girl a ring, but I couldn’t care less. If anything, I bought the ring for its symbolic connotations.
‘Come here. I missed you already,’ she said and pulled me inside the quilt, ‘and go nowhere.’ She kissed me.
‘I am not going anywhere.’ I kissed her back. ‘I have something for you.’
‘I want it if it is a long hug.’
‘That too,’ I said and fished it out of my pocket. ‘This is for you.’
‘What is?’ she paused and took the little red box in her hand. She gingerly opened the box as if she would break it. ‘Oh! This is beautiful, this is so beautiful!’ she exclaimed, running her fingers over the tiny stone studded in a gold ring. ‘Thank you so much, baby! Won’t you help me wear it?’ she asked.
Nervously, I slipped it on her ring finger, not worrying about what she would think I meant.
‘I didn’t know you had any taste in junk jewellery,’ she nudged me.
Junk jewellery? Maybe I should have listened to my friends and not trusted my terrible taste in jewellery. I kept shut.
‘Deb?’ she said as I stared blankly at the ring, which had seemed beautiful to me when I bought it, but now looked awful. Why? It looked all right before. Even the over-eager salesgirl had said I had brilliant taste and that my girl would be very happy. Liar, I thought. Scumbag, I thought.
‘This is real,’ I said. ‘It’s not junk.’
‘Real, as in?’ she asked, a little puzzled.
‘This is real gold, and this is a real stone. I got it from a nice place,’ I said, dejected. ‘Even the salesgirl told me that I had made a great choice. Is it that bad?’ It almost never happens, but I was, like, teary eyed.
‘Don’t tell me. This …’ she looked surprised. ‘It is really nice.’
‘You don’t have to lie now. You just said it. Never mind, it is for you. You can get it changed if you want to,’ I said, trying not to sound low. I added, ‘I have the receipt, and if you see the salesgirl, smack her for me. That lowlife.’
‘Deb? Are you crying?’ she asked. ‘Are you?’
‘Me? No! No, not at all. Why? Why would I cry?’ I asked.
‘Aw! That’s adorable.’ She looked at me like I was a puppy run over by a minivan. ‘I could tell you the item code of this ring, Deb. I know it’s real. I was just joking! And I, absolutely, LOVE it!’
‘I positively hate you,’ I grumbled. The useless tear streaked down my cheek, washing away my masculinity.
‘No, you don’t hate me,’ she responded. ‘You wouldn’t have given me this ring. Deb, this is very expensive.’
‘Money’s never an issue,’ I said, my head held high in mock arrogance.
‘I would just hate to marry a guy with no bank balance!’
‘Marry?’ I asked her. ‘How many times do I have to say it is just lust?’
She snuggled up to me and whispered, ‘For all the macho shit you pull on me, Deb, you’re like a little child inside. You’re like a soft toy with extra testosterone.’
‘That has to go down in history as the strangest compliment, ever,’ I answered.
‘I know,’ she said, closed her eyes and rested her head on my arm. ‘You smell nice.’
She wrapped her arms around me and purred.
5
It was late evening when we woke up amidst the packed suitcases and nowhere to go. I was hungry, but too lethargic to reach out to the phone and call for food. Avantika’s eyes were still closed, her lips quivering, half-awake, half-asleep. ‘What do you want to do for the next three days, baby?’ I asked her.
‘Don’t disturb me, let me finish the dream,’ she said and turned away from me.
‘It’s not a dream if you are awake,’ I said and she punched me. I waited for five minutes; her closed eyes fluttered and her lips curved into a small smile.
‘What was the dream all about?’
‘Nothing much, the usual,’ she said.
‘Either you don’t tell me such things or if you do, complete them! Tell me what the dream was about?’
‘Umm … we were … you know … kind of getting married,’ she murmured. I was pleasantly shocked and infinitely happy that she, too, thought about the idea.
‘So where was the wedding?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Who all were there?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘All I know is that it was a wonderful feeling. You were there. There was me, and a lot of flowers. There were promises and the vows that we would always be together. Your parents were there too.’
‘And yours?’
She didn’t answer. It had been a year since she last talked to her parents—conservative idiots—and they had called her a disgrace since she was overage, unmarried and was dating somebody. For them, she was a commodity to be married off in a family that would accentuate their name, and more importantly, their business. She hadn’t seen much of them since she started working.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, finding nothing to add to her wedding dream. ‘Hey, do you still want to go to Goa?’
‘Nah, I just realized after two months of office that all I want is to stretch and relax,’ she said.
‘Umm … Aparna Di called when you were asleep. We can go to her place,’ I said, wanting to cheer her up. ‘It will be a change.’
Aparna was my crazy elder sister who got married a couple of years ago, and she knew about Avantika and me. There were more than a few reasons for me to believe she was fonder of Avantika. They had met just a couple of times but there was an undeniable mutual liking between them.
‘She called me, too, in the m
orning. But I didn’t give it a thought because we were going to Goa. Yes, we can. That would be nice.’
‘You want to go?’ I asked her.
‘I would love to go. It’s been like ages since I met her. And she has been asking for so long to meet up,’ she said.
‘That is probably because Arnab is out on a tour and she has nothing better to do.’
‘Shut up! She just likes me so much,’ she said. ‘And you are just jealous that she likes me better.’
‘Oh, please! Keep me out of such TV-soap-opera-type feelings!’
She laughed. ‘So when do we leave?’ she asked.
‘Let us leave tomorrow.’
‘Check the bus timings?’
‘As you say,’ I said, like a puppy would. ‘The last thing I would do is try to argue with someone as pretty as you.’
‘Men are not meant to win arguments,’ she said.
‘Yes, they are not.’
‘I am so excited to see her,’ she said, clutching my hand.
We took the next available bus to Pune, which wasn’t until the next day. Aparna Di had been living in Pune since she got married and I had not seen her in the longest time. She had settled into the role of a wife more comfortably than I had imagined; she had been a problem child for all her life, spoilt and loved and boisterous and outgoing.
‘Why? I have spent eighteen years with her and let me tell you, she is boring.’
‘Did I ask you anything?’ she said.
‘By the way, Kabir called when you were loading your baggage. He wanted to know our plans for the day. I told him we are going to Pune,’ I said.
‘Why didn’t you give me the phone?’
‘You were busy.’
‘Oho!’ she said and started tapping her phone. I was miffed at her eagerness to call Kabir back, the self-satisfied bastard. Luckily enough, the call didn’t connect.
‘You seem to be pissed,’ she said and smiled.
‘You know why. I don’t like the guy. He’s just … I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘No, let’s talk about it.’
‘I don’t want to. It is better that we don’t talk about a guy who is probably better than me in every sense and likes my girlfriend.’
