by Durjoy Datta
DURJOY DATTA
Hold my Hand
Contents
About the Author
Dedication
Part One: The Nerd Boy
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
Part Two: The Blind Girl
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
Part Three: Hold My Hand
23
24
25
26
27
Part Four: The Nerd Boy
28
29
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Copyright
PENGUIN METRO READ
HOLD MY HAND
Durjoy Datta was born in New Delhi, India, and completed a degree in engineering and business management before embarking on a writing career. His first book Of Course I Love You! was published when he was twenty-one years old and was an instant bestseller. His successive novels—Now That You’re Rich!, She Broke Up, I Didn’t!, Ohh Yes, I Am Single!, If It’s Not Forever, Till the Last Breath, Someone Like You—have also found prominence on various bestseller lists, making him one of the highest selling authors in India.
Durjoy lives in New Delhi, loves dogs and is an active Crossfitter. For more updates, you can follow him on Facebook (www.facebook.com/durjoydatta1) or Twitter (@durjoydatta).
To the great cities of Delhi and Hong Kong
Part One
The Nerd Boy
1
When I was a little child, I could squeeze between the tiny bookracks where no books would dare find a space, with my favourite Roald Dahl book, and stay there till the end of Dad’s shift, away from the bullies, protected from people who didn’t appreciate books—I have grown up sitting in such secret places. In the last decade, I have gained inordinate height, though my weight has remained constant, making me resemble a praying mantis—tall, gangly, awkward and strange with spectacled eyes. Mom thinks I am beautiful.
Today, I sit in the corner, almost embarrassed, my extraordinarily long legs folded awkwardly under the chair as I read my favourite Henner Jog book for the thirteenth time this year.
The table I sit on is engraved with the names of my favourite authors and poets and lines from books I have read. When younger, I would scratch out the name of every book I would read with a compass. I stopped when I realized that all books, like all writers, aren’t equally good, and Dad slapped me and told me that I wasn’t supposed to destroy library property. The word ‘destroy’ stuck in my head—and I wondered if by engraving names of books and writers that I didn’t actually like any more or would recommend anyone to read, would destroy anything.
Now, I use permanent markers, which are anything but permanent, and I continually remove the names and the writers I wouldn’t want anyone else to read.
Indraprastha Book Library was set up in 1926; its best days behind it, now its patrons are mostly old people who still look for books that are long forgotten and out of print. In all probability, one can find the book here, given they have the requisite patience to find it amongst the 300,000,000 books and journals and magazines stacked and piled and racked in the six hundred shelves spread over four floors. The library still uses an archaic cataloguing software that hardly works.
Dad is still at his desk, and I figure I have four more hours to finish the book (I know I will finish it in two).
‘Namaste, Deep, reading the same book again?’ Asha, a woman of fifty-two years, who has been working here almost as long as Dad, smiles her toothy smile and asks. She wipes the floor with a wet rag, but the floor doesn’t dry up easily because the ceiling is too high and the fan above rotates with painful slowness.
I nod and say, ‘There are not many books around here,’ and she smiles at the irony, and she gets back to her mopping, and I get back to my book. It’s about a father and a little girl and the road trip they go on after her mother dies in an accident. It’s tragic, but it’s also funny and beautiful, like all good books are. I always cry reading the book, not when the mother dies but when they order for three people at a pit-stop and the girl takes the third plate and eats from it and says, ‘I am growing up. I need food!’
‘It’s time,’ Dad says peering over my shoulder; I am darkening the name HENNER JOG on the table.
‘I intend to rub it off some day,’ I answer, guilty even though it’s been ten years since the Compass Engraving incident.
‘It’s okay, no one comes to this part of the library any more. All kids want to do is go behind the racks and—’ Dad stops mid-sentence seeing me blush.
‘Did you read anything good today?’ he asks and I point to the book and Dad smiles, out of occasion, like the father in the book smiles at the daughter.
We leave the floor and walk to the elevator—the kind that looks like a wrought-iron cage, the kind of elevator people get stuck in and die—and exit the building. I wave to an autorickshaw, Dad haggles and the auto driver curses the fuel prices.
‘Did Maa call you?’ I ask.
‘Yes, she did. Is she still angry with you? She told me she has made aaloo poshto and doi maachh. I think you should meet her halfway,’ Dad says, trying to be the calm pacifist.
‘She can’t bribe me with food! Although I have to accept that she has made the right move towards reconciling with me, but like every expert negotiator, I will bide my time and sit this one out,’ I say and think about dinner. My mouth waters with anticipation. It’s strange how much I love food and yet how excruciatingly thin I am.
‘If only you could be an expert negotiator and save us some money on these auto rides back home,’ Dad mocks.
‘Whatever. I am just angry that you are on her side,’ I retort.
‘She’s gorgeous and she cooks great food, when you’re just a tall, lanky boy who’s only useful to change fused light bulbs,’ he laughs and flips to the page he had bookmarked before and starts reading even as the shaky auto threatens to knock the book out of his hands. It’s a poetry book by Rabindranath Tagore, and like every Bengali, he is devoted to the irritatingly multi-talented man.
It’s awfully quiet at dinner, till the voices of the distraught housewives in the Bengali serial fill up the bedroom. Mom is at one side of the bed, hardly eating. I am on the other, my plate resting on the day’s newspaper, which is spread across the bed.
‘Have you decided?’ she asks, her eyes fixed on the television.
‘Yes, Maa . . .’ I declare. ‘I have to go. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity. I can’t just let it go because you think I will die hungry or get kidnapped!’ I protest.
‘Do whatever you want to do, why do you ask me anything then?’ she grumbles and eats, her nostrils flared, cheeks flushed.
‘It’s not a big deal, Mamoni. He will go there for a few days and come back. It’s a very short project, isn’t it? They are asking him to code a software for cataloguing for libraries. It’s exciting for him!’ Dad says and pats Mom’s back.
‘I don’t know,’ she answers, blinking her tears away, shaking her head.
‘There is nothing to worry about, baba,’ Dad assures Mom. ‘They will take good care of him, I am sure. Plus, he is all grown up. For God’s sake, he’s taller than both of us put together!’
Mom starts crying, and in the next instant, in the blink of an eye, like an invisible ninja, is next to me, hugging me, drowning me in her tears, kis
sing me, wailing all the while. I am an only child, protected and loved beyond what is healthy for any kid to be, because parents die and then one has to go on road trips—just like it happened in the book I read this morning.
‘You will go so, so far away, babu. Why do you have to go? Can’t you just stay here and do something? What will I do without you? And what if something happens to you?’ Mom sobs, her tears wetting her face and mine.
‘I will be okay there, Maa. We will always be in touch over the phone! It’s not like the olden days. Remember technology? It’ll keep us connected constantly,’ I assure her. ‘And if the project ends early, I will come back.’
‘Who will feed you there?’ she asks and smothers me in a hug again, and then makes a small ball of rice and fish and puts it in my mouth. ‘You will grow so weak!’
‘Weaker than this?’ I respond and my father laughs; I weigh fifty-eight kilograms and I am six feet three inches, my waist worth the envy of runway models.
She cries some more at this, the serial ends, and we eat; Mom keeps blinking away her tears, and I daydream about cataloguing algorithms for libraries that would allow the books I like to be easily discovered, allowing me to slip in my own recommendations, quite like the desk in the library with book names engraved on it, only in binary and inside the computer.
But I hope not to destroy.
2
I am a really bad sketch artist. All the people in my sketches look nearly alike. They all have crooked noses and slender bodies, the buildings always lean to the right, the birds and the bees are always dots and scratches, and yet I sketch, when I am extraordinarily bored. Not because I don’t like the Advanced JAVA class in all its binary glory, but because I know it too well.
‘What are you sketching?’ Manasi asks. She is texting furiously on her iPhone. It’s new and has a glittery case with a picture of the five boys, who look alike and call themselves One Direction, on it, and the screen is crowded with applications.
‘I’m not sketching, I’m doodling,’ I lie.
‘Dude, you’re licking your lips and your concentration is like a sniper’s. You’re definitely sketching!’ she says, looking up momentarily, and then gets back to texting. ‘I really love the touch response of this phone. And your sketching is really bad, like really bad!’
‘Thank you for the confidence in my work. You’re a true friend,’ I say and put the pencil down. At least she’s honest. ‘And who are you texting anyway?’ I ask. ‘It’s not like you have any friend other than me.’
‘Oh shut up! I have Aman,’ she protests.
‘Aman doesn’t text you,’ I say, looking around. ‘Where is he, by the way?’
‘I don’t know. He must be with his bimbo girlfriend, who cares?’ she says. ‘You know what? Yesterday I saw this really cute boy running on the adjacent treadmill and he kept looking at me, and then I kept looking at him, and then he ran faster and faster and looked at me and I wondered whether he was trying to run away from me!’ She gives out a sigh.
Cute boys always spring up in her conversations whenever Aman’s girlfriend pops up in our conversations. Manasi is smart and large; Aman’s girlfriend wears pretty clothes and has a thin waist.
‘I think you should have run faster. You would have lost a few pounds,’ I poke teasingly.
‘Thanks, Einstein,’ she says. ‘You could use a few pounds. Don’t your bones hurt when you sit down? How does it feel to have, like, no flesh?’
‘It feels great that I can run fast. So when a zombie apocalypse happens, you would make an easy and wholesome meal and I will not,’ I answer back.
‘Even in death, I will be of use,’ she says, and smiles, showing all ten thousand of her teeth. ‘You are teaching me JAVA later.’
I nod. The class ends and disperses, and no one takes note of us sitting at the last bench, one sketching, and the other texting a nameless friend who I am jealous of, since Manasi is my only friend, apart from Aman, whose whereabouts are presently unknown.
New Delhi Technological Institute or NDTI, is not the most brilliant or unique or reputed engineering college in and around New Delhi, but it is certainly the most conveniently located. If a capital city can be assumed to be the centre of a country, then NDTI was also literally at the centre of India, and we were at the centre of the country, sketching and texting.
The institute has four tall, red buildings, and although they are connected with passageways, they bear no resemblance to one another in terms of architecture, much like the students in the college who are like islands—disconnected, distinct and unconcerned about each other.
That my college mates are islands, or a cluster of islands, becomes clearer in the canteen, which is one of the older parts of the college, because education or not, food is food. The cool students are in the corner sharing pictures, making plans; the studious ones are sharing notes; the buff students are discussing gym routines, and there are no passageways that connect these islands of people to one another.
‘You still didn’t tell me, who are you texting?’ I ask.
‘I am not texting, I am instant messaging. It’s my brother,’ she says. ‘The one who gifted me the phone? You should get a new phone too.’
‘I don’t need to instant message anyone. I’m pretty sure no one is in such a hurry to receive my messages. And my phone is fine. I can call and I can text. I don’t need applications to tell me what my hair will look like or what’s the weather like outside!’
‘That’s lame,’ she responds.
I use an old Nokia, the one which was secretly made out of toughened titanium or something, built to withstand holocausts and wars. It has Snakes on it, which is my favourite game, so I am happy with my phone.
‘Stop it with your new phone!’ I say irritatingly as I watch Manasi distorting pictures to make thin people look fat and fat people thin. She makes herself thin but her nose grows longer in the process and I don’t think I like her like that.
‘Don’t be jealous,’ she retorts and stuffs her mouth with french fries dipped in ketchup which is suspiciously thin and watery, and pinches the screen of her phone and makes herself even thinner. ‘That is perfect! That’s how I want to be.’
‘That’s hideous,’ I say.
‘Jealous!’ she snaps at me.
Manasi weighs ninety-three kilograms. At least that’s the number she goes by, even though it has been a year since she last stepped on a weighing scale. She doesn’t consider herself a foodie or a gourmet with a taste for fine food because she is quite the opposite. She just eats a lot, eats everything and eats all the time. But unlike other fat people who believe it’s okay to be fat, she hates herself and on days when she hates herself the most, like today, she eats even more.
‘Here he is!’ I say as Aman, our only other friend in college, and the one who’s cooler than us by miles, walks towards us with his trademark swagger and a half-smile, half-smirk on his face, which is gorgeous from all angles.
‘What’s up, dude?’ he asks and stretches the ‘U’ in the ‘dude’ for a few seconds and it sounds cool, or maybe it’s cool because he does it. Aman is too cool for his own good; he has no business hanging around with us, the real-life representation of Laurel and Hardy, except in this case, Hardy is a nineteen-year-old girl. Which reminds me that I had gifted a copy of A Fine Mess, a pictorial book on the lives of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, to Manasi on her birthday. I had thought it was a thoughtful gift but Manasi thought otherwise and said, ‘I am not that fat!’ She was right. Oliver Hardy was a hundred pounds heavier, though he lost one hundred and fifty pounds before his death which made him lighter than Manasi in the end. I pointed that out and she didn’t talk to me for two days and I learned that girls don’t like being compared to heavy, male actors.
‘You just missed an important Advanced JAVA class and seeing Manasi lose weight by pinching herself on her new cell phone. Show him!’ I ask her.
Manasi thrusts the screen with the thinner version of herself at Aman’
s face and Aman says, ‘Cool!’ stretching the Os till it sounds like that’s the only way people should actually say the word.
‘I love the phone, man,’ he says and starts tapping on random applications.
‘You can keep it,’ Manasi says and blushes.
‘That’s so sweet of you, but no thanks,’ he answers. He was now racing a Peugeot 500 down the streets of downtown Manhattan on Need for Speed (NFS)—only for Apple iOS—and I can so imagine him do it in real life.
‘It’s a gift,’ I say.
‘But it’s mine to give away!’ she snaps, her eyes icy-cold when they look at me, and marshmallow-like when they look at Aman.
‘I could play this all day!’ Aman says. ‘But I have tennis practice. Our college team sucks and I am a part of the suckery.’
‘You’re awesome. I have seen you play!’ Manasi counters.
‘You’re too kind,’ he says, and just then his car crashes against the wall and the man in the car pixelates and dies. Blood splashes on the screen and the phone asks if he wants to continue. ‘I can really do this all day . . .’
‘Yes, you can,’ Manasi says, happy to have him glued to her phone. Aman hands it back to her.
‘I have Snakes on mine. You can play if you want to,’ I offer Aman my phone.
‘I don’t want to beat your score, man. You will always be the undefeated champion of the great game of Snakes. It used to be fun though,’ he says, breaks a solitary fry in two and eats it. No wonder he’s in such great shape! Manasi can take a tip or two from him, especially since she spends so much time staring at him. Aman then asks me about the class and what all he’s missed, calls me a genius at computer languages—which isn’t literally true but true enough—asks me if I would teach him, and I say of course I will, while Manasi just stares at him adoringly.
‘Hey, Deep. Are you still going to Hong Kong? Did your mother give you permission yet?’ he asks.
