Half Torn Hearts

by Novoneel Chakraborty

  ‘That’s not the point.’

  ‘How did you get this Shanay?’ she sounded more insistent this time.

  ‘Are you having an affair?’ Shanay asked, his teeth clenched on the last word.

  ‘Are you following me?’ she charged.

  ‘Now who is beating around the bush?’

  The coffee arrived. Shanay took a sip. Afsana didn’t care to even touch the black coffee.

  ‘I can tell you the truth but I don’t think you will accept it as the truth,’ she riposted.

  Shanay chortled derogatorily.

  ‘Nirmaan approached me,’ she began, ‘after more than a decade. He wanted to know if a common friend of ours had contacted me. He thought I would know something about her. That’s why we met. For less than two minutes.’

  Shanay looked at her for some time and said, ‘You’re right. I don’t think that’s the truth.’

  ‘First answer me, how did you get this picture?’

  ‘Your friend Raisa Barua is dead,’ Shanay said bluntly, sipping more of his Irish coffee.

  Afsana frowned looking at him. Something about his body language told her he wasn’t bluffing.

  ‘Are you going to tell me how you know all this?’

  ‘A friend of Raisa—Lavisha—told me,’ Shanay took a moment to tell her whatever the voice notes told him about Raisa’s death.

  ‘I need to leave,’ Afsana said.

  ‘Are you going to meet Nirmaan now?’ he asked reaching for her hand.

  She turned to glare at his grasp and said, ‘Let go of my hand, Shanay.’ He did. Afsana left the café. She went straight home, but couldn’t sleep the whole night. Raisa’s face kept haunting her. In the wee hours, she couldn’t hold back her tears any more. She repeatedly told herself that Raisa couldn’t be dead. There had to be some confusion. At around eight o’clock, the next morning, she called Nirmaan. He answered almost instantly.

  ‘I want to meet you,’ she said.

  There was silence. Then he said, ‘Where do you want me to come?’

  ‘Ultadanga footbridge.’ Like old times, she wanted to add.

  Silence.

  ‘Okay.’ Like old times? he couldn’t ask.

  CHAPTER 7

  Afsana was driving to the same Ultadanga footbridge where an important part of her past had once played out. It was also the place where many a time she had parked her car after she returned to Kolkata from Milan to simply stare at the bridge. Every time she could see two teenagers sitting by the stairs, wholly in love with the other. And then . . .

  This was the place she’d met Nirmaan for the last time before she left for Europe years ago. She didn’t know why she decided to meet at the footbridge. Perhaps in a corner of her heart she was dying to relive her past and this was the only way she could. As she parked her car by the stairs, she could see Nirmaan standing atop the bridge. He was pacing up and down. Afsana left her parking lights on, got out of her car and took the stairs. She was by his side in a matter of minutes. She had tried to rehearse her speech to break the news to him as gently as possible, but a great big lump formed in her throat when she stood before him.

  ‘Do you know any Lavisha?’ she asked abruptly.

  Nirmaan repeated the name under his breath, as if lost in his thoughts, and then replied, ‘I know a Lavisha who used to work with us. An employee really.’

  ‘Us?’

  ‘Raisa and me. We have a start-up running,’ he explained.

  Raisa and Nirmaan have created something together, Afsana swallowed the lump.

  ‘How do you know Lavisha?’ he asked.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ it was clear to her that Nirmaan wasn’t aware of Raisa’s death. If at all that were true, Afsana thought. And if Lavisha knew Nirmaan, why didn’t she call him instead of reaching out to Shanay?

  Afsana was about to say something when she heard a traffic policeman yell, ‘Kaar gadi eita?’ He was standing beside her car.

  ‘Is that—’ Nirmaan began and stopped seeing her nod.

  ‘Mind if we drive around and talk? I’ll drop you off at The Park,’ she offered.

  ‘Sure.’

  She made her way to the stairs and began descending to the sidewalk. By then she had decided not to tell Nirmaan anything without crosschecking the truth herself.

  She messaged Shanay: give me Lavisha’s number.

  As Nirmaan sat beside her in the car, Shanay’s response came: forget it.

  Afsana felt frustrated. She asked Nirmaan, ‘Do you have Lavisha’s number?’

  ‘I should, but what of it? How come you even know her?’ he asked.

  ‘I think you should talk to her as soon as possible,’ Afsana replied. Nirmaan gave her an intent look, looked for Lavisha’s number on his telephone contact list and called it. He put the call on speaker. They both listened as the ring went through, but nobody answered.

  ‘She left the job almost a year ago. Or maybe more. I don’t know,’ he shrugged.

  ‘Please, just talk to her about Raisa once,’ Afsana said. They drove quietly. By a traffic signal Nirmaan saw another hoarding for Tushara Boutique.

  ‘I’m glad you named it Tushara,’ he said with a tight smile. As a response she extracted a packet of Ice Bursts from her bag and lit one cigarette. She took a long drag and exhaled outside the window. Nirmaan didn’t react. This wasn’t the first time that he had seen her smoke, the last time was when she and Raisa had been blowing a cloud together.

  Afsana chain-smoked three cigarettes and they sat pretending to be oblivious of the other’s presence. And then suddenly Afsana asked, ‘Are you and Raisa married?’ She had intended to ask something else altogether and couldn’t really believe the question that she had blurted.

  ‘No. We aren’t,’ he replied after a thoughtful pause.

  ‘Why? You guys eloped, right?’

  ‘We did run away, but not to get married. I never loved Raisa that way.’

  ‘Which way?’

  ‘The way I love . . .’ Nirmaan sighed and lamely finished, ‘someone.’

  ‘What happened between you and that someone?’ she asked inexorably. Nirmaan was silent. She kept driving. He told her that he was staying at The Park but he had a business meeting at Novotel.

  As they approached the hotel’s entrance, Nirmaan replied, ‘Life. Life happened between me and that someone.’ He noticed Afsana turn away. A valet came and opened the passenger side door.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Nirmaan asked sensing her body was shaking. She turned to look at him.

  ‘Don’t I look absolutely all right?’ she asked, hot tears coursing down her face. Nirmaan got out. She drove off before he could say anything more.

  Nirmaan was about to summon an Uber after his business meeting when he saw Afsana’s car drive up into the portico.

  ‘Get in,’ she commanded, he obeyed. She drove off. She was about to light a cigarette when she saw Nirmaan lighting another. It was her old brand. She kept her cigarette back and said, ‘May I?’

  ‘Sure?’ He offered her one from the cigarette box in his hand. She took and lit it.

  ‘When did you start smoking?’ she asked.

  ‘Some time back,’ Nirmaan said and thought, just don’t ask me why it did it.

  ‘Why did you guys run away?’ she asked.

  ‘How much do you know?’ he asked.

  ‘I know nothing,’ she replied. Nirmaan couldn’t guess her emotions.

  ‘I couldn’t sit for my IIT entrance exam. I was kidnapped and held prisoner for the duration of the examination. I still don’t know who did it, but my hunch says it was Tarun.’

  Afsana slowed down and parked the car.

  ‘Tarun? You mean that Tarun?’

  Nirmaan nodded, ‘The one and only.’ Afsana felt that she was to blame for that terrible experience that Nirmaan must have had. Tarun, after all, was connected to her, not him.

  ‘And then?’ she asked.

  Nirmaan took a while to give her a synopsis of the la
st thirteen years. From Raisa’s illegal abortion to their staying together, her amazing cooking skills and their business model . . . everything. He sighed in the end, adding, ‘I looked for you on Orkut and Facebook all the time.’

  That was when I was deeply depressed and had cut myself off from everything, Afsana thought. But what she couldn’t understand was: Raisa and Nirmaan lived together for so many years but neither proposed to the other? I can understand Nirmaan might have been in love with me, but what about Raisa? she thought.

  ‘Didn’t Raisa have a boyfriend or—’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  That’s weird. Afsana dropped Nirmaan at The Park. He didn’t ask if they were meeting again and neither did she.

  ‘Talk to Lavisha and let me know,’ she said before leaving him at the entrance of the hotel.

  Afsana didn’t go to work that day. She remained in her flat trying to sort through her utterly confused mind. How could Raisa not have fallen in love with Nirmaan in all these years? Something did not add up.

  It was also the day when her bestie from her graduation days, Dipannita, was supposed to come to Kolkata from Singapore with her husband for a week. They decided to meet up at 10 Downing Street later that night for a drink.

  After congratulating Afsana on her business venture and raising a toast to it, Dipannita realized that her bestie didn’t look her usual self.

  ‘What’s up, hun? Is it just a case of bridal nerves? I felt exactly the same, d’you remember?’ Dipannita said chuckling. Afsana sat still, like she hadn’t heard her. She started murmuring some lines in Hindi.

  Mera dil ek chota sa gaanv hai.

  Log kam hain yahan.

  Roshni bhi nahi, na hi bijli.

  Lekin jab tum milne aaye,

  Barson ki raat mein bhi,

  Sab kuch subah sa saaf dikhne laga.

  Dipannita looked at her bestie with wide eyes for a moment. ‘Hey, what’s up, darling?’ she asked, gripping her friend’s cold hands.

  ‘I met Nirmaan,’ Afsana replied.

  Dipannita’s eyes grew even wider, ‘You mean Nirmaan Bose?’

  Afsana nodded, gulping down her Jack Daniel’s. Dipannita knew who and what Nirmaan Bose meant to her. There were times when she badly wanted to meet him after hearing so much about him. She knew that Afsana wasn’t an easy girl to impress, and if she thought highly of someone—especially a man—then he had to be really special. Exceptional. And rare.

  ‘Where did you meet him? On Facebook or for real?’ Dipannita’s excitement was palpable.

  Afsana paused for a bit before she started talking. ‘Even now I feel like I hallucinated both our meetings.’

  ‘You met him twice already? And you’re telling me this now? I want the details. Come on now,’ Dipannita pushed her glass aside and looked at her friend expectantly.

  Afsana absentmindedly moved her whiskey glass around in circles, gazing unseeingly at it as she said, ‘He said he doesn’t love Raisa the way he loves someone else.’

  ‘Is this someone . . . you?’

  Afsana looked up. Tears welled up in her eyes as she answered, ‘All these years’ she said, ‘I thought things were dead between us. I really believed time would bury us both and whatever we once shared. But after meeting him again, I realized that what two persons create for each other in the privacy of their hearts can never die. We may become egoistic or stubborn or even indifferent and look the other way but that creation is a permanent edifice. With time it becomes such an intrinsic part of our existence that to demolish it we’ll have to destroy ourselves too. To be honest, there have been times when I envied Raisa. I always asked myself why I couldn’t have been the one with whom he eloped. You know, I just got to know that he and Raisa have a start-up together. And I wondered why couldn’t I be the one with whom he created something so strong that nothing could challenge it? Why couldn’t I have been the one with whom he could be both domestic and wild?’

  The pub reverberated with loud music, but there was silence between the two women.

  ‘Does he know you’re getting married soon?’ Dipannita asked.

  ‘He does. I broke the news to him baldly the first time I met him. But then I wondered who it was that I was kidding. Can I really be taken by anyone other than Nirmaan? What does “being taken” or “become someone else’s” mean anyway? Can any ritual, oath or social ceremony rinse a heart of memories? For nearly fifteen years I’ve both loved and hated Nirmaan. I loved him for what he is and what he made me experience and hated him for not waiting for me. It was difficult to accept, but with time I did accept it. And one of my ways of acceptance was to surrender to the choices of my parents in life-defining matters. Just consider this, Dippi: a man staying with a woman for thirteen years, sharing a room, sharing all the small incidents of life and all his experiences with her, still doesn’t give her the space that he reserved for me. For me!’

  Dipannita swallowed a lump. Although it sounded too perfect to be true, she knew that if Afsana didn’t believe in it, she wouldn’t have shared it with her.

  ‘Today, after Nirmaan implied that he is still in love with me, I’m yearning for him more than ever. He was committed to “us” even when we weren’t in a relationship for more than a decade. Even when there wasn’t a remote possibility of that “us”.’

  Dipannita sipped her drink and noticed Afsana had an amused smile on her face. ‘It’s a funny thing really, but Nirmaan effectively destroyed my capability to love someone. The man I’m about to wed, I don’t love him. Marriage is just a social and legal contract. And the love that stems out of such an arrangement is more often than not a convenience of and for the contract.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ Dipannita sounded scandalized.

  ‘Rare men give the rarest kind of pain and the rarest kind of pleasure. When you love a rare man like that you are proud to be a woman in a way that is also rare. My impulse, right now, is to be with Nirmaan but my social impulse tells me never to meet him again,’ Afsana said.

  ‘I think you shouldn’t. There’s too much risk involved. Your parents, Shanay, his parents. And Shanay is a good man as well. He’ll keep you happy.’

  ‘I don’t want to be happy. I want to be at peace every day for the rest of my life. And I never said Shanay is a bad guy.’

  Neither said anything. They finished their drinks and went out for a smoke. Just then Shanay telephoned and she answered after two rings.

  ‘Your dad just called,’ he said without preamble. ‘Your family’s panditji has said that the best date that he could zero in for our marriage is a month from now. I’m okay with that.’

  ‘Okay.’ Although her head was reeling with the alcohol, she did her best to focus.

  ‘However, you’ll have to stay with me in Bengaluru until we get married,’ Shanay said.

  Afsana was silent and he added, ‘I’ve had a talk with our parents. They are okay with it. So pack up. We will fly tomorrow evening together.’

  He hung up. Afsana stared blankly at the phone screen and then chuckled.

  ‘What’s up now?’ Dipannita asked.

  ‘You know, Shanay always said that he never could understand me.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I have a feeling he soon will.’

  Afsana took a long drag from her cigarette.

  CHAPTER 8

  ‘I’m parked outside your house. Come out,’ Afsana said on the telephone and hung up before he could respond. Shanay drew back the curtain of his room and peered out but couldn’t see any car. He walked into the street in his pyjamas and noticed her car at the far end of the lane.

  ‘What’s happened?’ he asked as he climbed in, then quickly added, ‘Are you drunk?’

  ‘Not so much that I can’t talk,’ she replied.

  ‘We can talk tomorrow. I’ll drive you home,’ he said. Shanay was about to get out when she reached for his hand.

  ‘I’ve connected the dots,’ she said, smiling sarcastically.

  ‘
What do you mean?’

  ‘The prolonged hugs of late, that urgent fuck when I was in Bangalore, the wish to get married immediately and now to cohabit until we are married so I don’t stay in Kolkata. All this because you’re a fattu and your ego has been squashed. You’re like any other man; scared of competition, childishly insecure and suspicious of everybody to the point of being paranoid.’

  Shanay felt deeply embarrassed because Afsana had read him like a book. He gave her a steely look and said nastily, ‘Yeah, sure. So when your partner has a secret rendezvous with her ex- mere months before your wedding, you’re expected to celebrate with a cocktail party, right?’

  Afsana returned the steely look as she replied, ‘If you don’t know it yet, his name is Nirmaan Bose. Who told you that he’s my ex-? True, he was there in my life before. But I met him again after more than a decade. I met him this morning again and realized that he is my present as well. Moreover, the fact that you thought keeping me away from Nirmaan until our wedding day will sunder us forever tells me that your definition of marriage is moral captivity. It’s like, let her become my wife, I’ll fuck her as many times as I want to and then, even if she has an affair, I won’t care. Or is it like, marriage will make her too guilt-ridden to ever cross the “line”? If it’s the latter, then you don’t know even one per cent of Afsana Agarwal yet.’

  Shanay’s awkwardness gave way to anger. He took his time to speak.

  ‘Look, Afsana, let’s act like adults here and be done with it. Our marriage is fixed. I have the right to know whatever it is that’s brewing between you and this guy.’

  Afsana chuckled softly, ‘Oh okay. So, you have the right! But do you have the sensibility to understand what it is that has been forever there and will always be between me and “this guy”?’

  ‘Stop it. Just tell me whatever it is that I should know. This is your last chance. I’ll forgive you.’

  ‘Forgive me?’ she swivelled around to face him now. ‘For what?’ This was the loudest he had ever heard her speak.

  ‘For keeping me in the dark, damn it!’ he hissed.

  ‘I didn’t keep you in any darkness.’

  ‘Really? I’m your husband-to-be, for god’s sake. You kept your past, the past that you’re now flagrantly flaunting as your present, a secret from me.’