Of Course I Love You!: Till I find someone better…

by Durjoy Datta

  I spent hours at the Delhi University metro station, hoping that she would walk by, spot me and then come running into my arms and tell me how sorry she was. Nothing happened. I called up her friends to help me track her. They, too, had no idea where Avantika was. I asked Vernita but Tanmay was tight-lipped about Avantika’s whereabouts. I called the office she had joined and the receptionist wouldn’t connect my call unless I knew which department she was working in. After three calls, she threatened to call the police and submit my number. I didn’t try it again.

  Slowly and steadily, my world was falling apart. I reminded myself that I was doing okay before Avantika came along and changed everything. It didn’t help. Since the time I met Avantika, things had changed. Everyone around me had ceased to matter. The world around me ceased to matter; I didn’t even want people around. And now there was no one. I had never thought I would need anybody else. I had no friends for I never made good ones.

  Had I been a drinker, I would have wasted myself day after day. But since I wasn’t, I ate with a vengeance. I bloated up and gained a lot of weight. It was as if I was punishing myself. I spent hours staring blankly at the television and eating. I ordered everything home. I couldn’t have gone out to eat, for every place reminded me of her and the time we had spent there.

  I spent many of those days writing the defunct blog, but ended up writing her name repeatedly. I was glad nobody read it because all my blog posts were on Avantika, on how much I missed her, and how ridiculous it was to break up with her. The few people who used to comment on my blog stopped doing so. I wished they would comment. All the comments on my blog went straight to Avantika’s mailbox because she had created the blog. I wished somehow she would stumble on the blog and feel sorry for me. I wasn’t even looking for her to come back any more. I just wanted pity. A little acceptance to tell me that she was sorry she had left me.

  I kept tracking her on social networking sites to see if there was anybody else in her life. But there was absolutely nothing that would suggest anything. She had not been online for about a month now. As a last resort, I enrolled for the Spirit of Living course, hoping I might just bump into Avantika, even though I knew she was in Bangalore from her last text.

  Somewhere during those days, I had accepted that I would never see her again. It felt better when I thought that all the doors had closed in on me. It was better than the times when I felt there was a glimmer of hope. It’s better to die in an atmosphere without oxygen than struggle in one with traces of it.

  The recognition of pain told me that I had loved her truly and that’s something I had never done before.

  Not surprisingly, I did not bump into Avantika during the course. When I joined the course, which they claimed to be a spiritual uplifting process, I thought I would trash everything, fight with the members, fight with the teachers, call Sri Guru names, and walk off dramatically. But once the course started, I couldn’t do any of that. It may not have been spiritually uplifting for me but I did see people in the most rotten of moods going out with a smile on their faces. Stressed-out couples, out-of-job executives, broken hearts like me, drug addicts, everybody smiled and tried to get rid of their problems.

  The course was a glorified meeting of a few miserable people like us dancing, singing, playing and sharing our woes with each other. It worked like a charm on most people. Including me. It wasn’t until the fifth day that I opened up and burst into tears and found myself in the arms of a forty-year-old woman who had lost both her children in a gruesome car accident. When she, a woman who had lost two children, told me that everything would be okay, my grief seemed a lot smaller than hers. In the fifteen days of the course, the woman became my best friend. She talked about her kids, a boy and a girl, and I talked about Avantika. Sometimes, we broke down together and sometimes we laughed like little babies on a sugar high. I marvelled at her courage and she told me I had a huge heart. She was a godsend.

  I started accepting my break-up. I forgave Spirit of Living. Not because I had started accepting the senseless philosophy (which wasn’t as senseless any more) but because I started seeing with my own eyes how much people revered Sri Guru. He was a father figure to millions. I had seen people’s faces light up just at the mention of his name. He was like a god to many. I hate to say this, but I started respecting him, even loving him. The only time I wasn’t woeful about the break-up was when I looked at his adorable bearded face and his enlightened eyes.

  But I did not forget that my break-up, for once, was not my own doing. The course helped and I hate to say that because had it not been for the Spirit of Living I would still be with Avantika!

  I called up Smriti, half out of guilt, half to get over Avantika, but just ended up crying. Smriti tolerated me for a while and then asked me not to call her ever again.

  Another month passed like that. All my life, I had driven everyone away. Now, it was I who was being driven away, from friends, from family, from Avantika. I had nobody to talk to, nobody to laugh with, nobody to cry with, and nobody to celebrate with. But then again, I wanted nobody, I wanted her. I wanted the time she had promised me. Now it was all gone. I had been dumped, unceremoniously, painfully, unreasonably … and a lousy job at a public-sector office beckoned.

  Chapter 17

  ‘Are you sure you are going to be fine?’ Shrey asked. He’d called from Germany, so the call must have cost him a lot. I liked that at least somebody cared. ‘I know it’s been kind of hard for you. First Avantika and then your family leaving. But it isn’t that bad; there are a million girls out there. Go for them. You will be just fine.’

  ‘I hope so, man. Hang up now. It must be costing you a lot,’ I said. I didn’t want to be sympathized with all the time. It made me feel like a loser, which I probably was.

  ‘Are you crazy? I hacked into their telephone exchange and so actually I am calling from their … let me see … oh fuck, it’s their parliament’s line … fuck … bye. You take care …’

  ‘You haven’t changed, have you?’

  ‘And you don’t need to change. The girls are waiting.’ He hung up.

  Shrey was working with some IITians in a start-up of some kind. They were trying to make a hybrid car in Germany, which could run on biodiesel and sunlight. While Shrey’s life kept getting better, things were getting worse for me every passing day. I was the only one going to a government office amongst us. The pay was horrible and I knew the work environment would be too. While I was already cursing BHEL, the office I was destined to work at, Vernita’s job had already started a fortnight ago and they were sending her to Thailand for a new employees’ retreat. Tanmay had joined his uncle’s business and had started preparing for the CAT again.

  Viru and Yogi had joined their job in the research and development department of a tractor-manufacturing unit in Punjab. They were back in their homeland. It suited them. Everybody is happy, I thought.

  Vernita had everything she wanted. Viru and Yogi had each other, their homeland and loads of liquor, I was sure. Shrey was living his dream of being amongst technology maniacs and working on a project that no one believed in. Of the people around me, I had ended up the worst.

  Avantika’s words rang in my head—You will never get the pants ironed if you don’t take them off.

  I didn’t care whether I was going for a job at a government office or a plush investment bank. The only thing that mattered was Avantika. If I didn’t have her, nothing else mattered.

  The morning of the first day of my job at BHEL was especially tough. I missed her even more now. There was no one to wake me up, no one to pester me and remind me of the little details, and no one to tell me that I would be great and that I had nothing to fear. I dragged myself out of bed, slipped into the shirt and pair of jeans I had bought a few days before. The office bus was right on time and the middle-aged uncles folded their newspapers and boarded the bus. The air inside the office bus was depressing. There were grown men sleeping with their heads on the windowpanes, drooling a
ll over themselves. I decided that I would take the car to work from the next day. It took an hour for the bus to pick more old men and reach the office. The final few jerks woke everyone up in the bus.

  I stared at the monstrous office of BHEL standing tall at Bhikhaji Cama Place, New Delhi. It was fifteen storeys tall but looked at least thirty. It was a gigantic building made out of brown stone and cement, placed in what looked like an ascending and descending staircase. So this is the place, I told myself. I had lost the drive to sit for any other interviews.

  The guard asked for my ID and I fished it out and flashed it as I moved through the automated doors. I had been there before, but always looked at it as a place where losers or old people worked.

  I still hadn’t come to accept that I was a loser and that I had just lost the woman I loved. The world was there for the taking. I just had to figure out how and whether I wanted it more than I wanted Avantika.

  I looked up at the huge board that had all the details about the building.

  Piping. Sixth floor.

  I tried to memorize the data. The building was about five decades old, but it was surprisingly well maintained for a government office. The lift was a little tricky for me, though. Different lifts stopped at different floors, so it took me quite some time to get used to it.

  ‘Is this the piping department?’ I asked a bespectacled man who I was sure had spent all his life at BHEL.

  He took two full minutes to chew upon what I had asked and answered, ‘This is the eighth floor. Piping is the sixth floor. New employee? Tricky lift, eh?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  ‘You will have to work really hard here. Our principles of integrity and hard work are well known around the globe,’ he said and became suddenly strangely demonic. ‘And get a haircut. Such long hair is unacceptable.’

  ‘Okay, sir,’ I said and left before he could comment on how my falling jeans would further rot the company.

  As I jumped alternate stairs to reach the sixth floor, I wondered whether I would end up like him, old, lazy and bitter. I would not. This is just temporary, I told myself.

  I did intend to leave the job in a few years and go for an MBA at Harvard or Yale. Or the one at ISB. Or maybe go to the Middle East. They needed a lot of mechanical engineers there.

  I might even meet Avantika’s parents. Not that they would have liked it if I told them anything. They were Punjabis and they wanted a nice Punjabi boy—rich and fair and tall—for their daughter. But then, I could have been an oil magnate and impressed them out of their wits. Or become the president of the United States. Or just got admitted to a mental asylum.

  Just as my mind started to drift off to thoughts of Avantika, another old voice called out. ‘Deb?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I am Deepak Malhotra. Deputy general manager, piping. Your dad talked to me. Welcome to BHEL. I hope you like it here.’

  Mr Malhotra was one of the better-dressed people in BHEL. Most people there in the office wore the same shirt for a month before putting it out to wash.

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Amit is waiting for you in cubicle number five. You are a management trainee under him. He will show you around. If you have any problem, you can see me or Mr Goyal. Cubicle five is the third one from the left along that aisle. Go ahead. Nice meeting you, young man … nice jeans,’ he chuckled.

  He reminded me of my father, who kept asking me how often they dropped down and how I managed to wear them so low.

  I decided to love him. He didn’t have a paunch, was tall, and had a perfectly trimmed peppered moustache. He was a man of consequence and it showed in his demeanour.

  I walked down the aisle of the piping department. It dispelled quite a few doubts I had in my mind. It wasn’t as dilapidated as I thought it would be. They were definitely not using MS DOS. The computers were all upgraded. The desks were swanky and clean, with no spit stains on them. The cubicles were nice and spacious, and there were two huge offices in the corners. One for the DGM and another one for the head of the department.

  It’s another matter that the computers missed people. There was a bunch of people in some corner discussing the new receptionist in the office. Another bunch discussed the cricket match the previous day, while they sipped tea and occasionally ran their hands over their bulging stomachs.

  But overall, the office was impressive. I liked it. I had to. I reached cubicle five.

  ‘Hello, sir,’ I said.

  ‘Hello!’ he said as he swirled around his chair to set his eyes on me. I saw his desktop screen. It was Monica Belluci in a gold bikini, and it was signed ‘Amit’ beneath. He wore a shirt tucked deep inside his hideously faded jeans and wore glasses with a frame that was heavier than him. He had not yet grown out of his fifth-grade hairstyle that his parents had decided for him. A dreadful crew cut. Unlike other desks, his was a tutorial on how to keep a desk organized. For someone like me, who had more books sleeping with me on the bed than stacked on an unused study table, this was new.

  I decided to like him, too. Not that I had a choice.

  ‘So you must be Deb?’ he asked. He gave the twirling pencil in his hand quite some rotations.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I said.

  ‘I am Amit. Call me Amit. I am no sir. I joined last year, so it is cool.’

  ‘Fine, Amit.’

  ‘How many trainees have joined? Any girls? Any hot ones?’

  ‘No, Amit. Not that I know of,’ I said. I was little surprised. Not that he looked old, but I didn’t expect this question so early in the day. Not from somebody who looked like the king of Nerdsville. He desperately tried to sound urbane, but his small-town upbringing was dripping from every consonant and syllable. The small-town accent was overpowering.

  ‘Not that you know of? If somebody would know that, it’s you. Want a tour around the office?’

  ‘I would love one.’

  The ice between us broke the very second we met. It lit my dull life suddenly. It was my longest conversation in over a month, apart from the childless woman at the Spirit of Living convention.

  He stood up. He wasn’t more than five-feet-five and barely had any flesh on him. He was skin stretched over bones. I could have flicked him into orbit.

  ‘Okay, let’s go. Let’s start from the least glamorous to the most glamorous departments. First on our list is the planning department.’

  ‘The least glamorous?’

  ‘Yes, all the old people work there. They are the reason why most of our projects get delayed. The excruciatingly slow department. It’s like a very slow dentist performing a root canal on all your molars,’ he said and started to hop off. His imitation Nike shoes were in sharp contrast to mine but he carried them off with unmatched aplomb.

  ‘My father worked in the planning department,’ I said. Not that it mattered to me; it was just that he worked hard enough for a government employee and he should get credit for that.

  ‘Oh! Debashish Roy? Now I get it. It just slipped out of my mind. You want me to apologize for what I just said. I won’t, because you don’t want me to. But yes, your father. He worked really hard and tried to fast track every project. Why do you think he got the transfer?’

  ‘Okay.’ Dad never ceased to make me proud. Although working in a PSU after IIT, Delhi, isn’t what people expect. If only he’d worked in an multinational, I would have graduated from Purdue.

  ‘No, it’s not okay. Count and tell. How many people are at their desks? Quick, you have ten seconds,’ he said and started looking at his watch.

  ‘Everybody, I guess.’

  ‘That took eighteen seconds. Eighteen seconds and still a wrong answer. The answer is nobody. You are not at your desk if you are not working. Okay, another question. On how many screens do you see the screensaver on?’

  ‘Everybody’s.’

  ‘That’s three seconds. And that’s the right answer. That also means nobody has touched their computer screens for at least the last ten minutes. And
it’s just ten thirty. Why do people not take their jobs seriously? Extended Monday morning blues, huh?’

  ‘Yes, maybe.’

  ‘You don’t speak much, do you?’

  It’s useless trying to blow spit bubbles in the direction opposite to a gale, I thought. He looked like a nerd but definitely didn’t talk like one. I mean, he wasn’t a stud but he sounded like a hyperactive, hyper-vocal genius.

  Piping, cost engineering, rotatory equipment, civil department etcetera, etcetera. He was desperately trying to explain what each department did, but my brain diligently rejected such useless bits of information.

  I felt he told me more about BHEL than people get to know in their entire lives. This office was in sharp contrast to what I had imagined and heard of offices that my college mates were going to. Small-town guys and girls flocked to this place. From where they belonged, there was still a certain amount of prestige associated with government jobs.

  ‘This is the last department. Chemical processes. And that is my dream girl.’

  ‘Who? What? That?’ I exclaimed.

  ‘Why? Isn’t she good?’ he asked with the innocence of a two-year-old who has just sketched his first drawing and is nervous about what his art teacher might say.

  I looked at her. She was ten shades darker than I was and I was, by no means, fair. She stood at five feet and wore an awkward, ill-fitting pink suit. She could have passed by me a zillion times and I wouldn’t have noticed. She had a sweet face but after Avantika and Vernita, I had set myself high standards.

  ‘I know. You wouldn’t like her. You must be going around with sexy, mini-skirted girls. But she is a nice girl.’

  ‘I am not going around with anybody,’ I said. I didn’t need to say that but I wanted to check whether it still hurt. It did.