by Durjoy Datta
‘Why? You broke up with your girlfriend? This is the problem with Delhi girls. They are all like this. That’s why I like her. She’s from my homeland—Bihar. Do you want to meet her?’
Delhi girls? I wondered if it had anything to do with it. Maybe she actually had dumped me for somebody else.
‘No, it’s fine.’
‘It’s okay. Don’t be shy.’ He tugged my hand and pulled me all the way through the aisle to her table. I was standing right in front of her.
‘Hi, Astha,’ Amit said.
And for a moment, I felt I was back in the time when I first met Avantika. His cheeks had turned the loveliest shade of pink and his milky white complexion didn’t help his cause either. He fidgeted and nervously shifted his weight from one foot to another.
‘Hi, Amit. You, here?’ she said. She pulled her head out from beneath foot-long sheets that had lines, semicircles, three-fourth circles crisscrossing all over it. She fumbled with the sheets thrice before she managed to fold them into neat bundles. I wondered how these guys were so well organized.
‘Ummm … meet my new management trainee, Deb,’ he stammered. For the first time that day, I saw him stumbling for words. He was sweating despite the cold blast from the air conditioner.
‘Hello,’ she said.
‘Good morning, ma’am,’ I said.
‘Call me Astha.’ She sounded sweet, too, a voice that matched her kind, docile face.
‘Perfect,’ I said.
‘Amit, I have some work right now. Lunch break?’
‘No problem. See you later then,’ he said, still blushing and red like the setting sun.
‘Welcome to BHEL,’ she said and wiggled her hand. Her palm was darker than the back of my hand.
‘Thanks. Bye.’ We walked off.
As soon as we were out of her audible and visible range, he started to tug at my shirt and ask, ‘Isn’t she cute? Isn’t she cute?’ She was, without any doubt, the first girl Amit had talked to. Amit confirmed that later. Amit jumped around boyishly and waited for my answer. He didn’t look a day older than twenty!
‘Hey, chill. Yes, she is cute. Are you guys going out?’
‘I don’t know. I once told her that I like her. She didn’t answer and we haven’t talked about it.’
‘What? Why? You said you like her, then why didn’t you ask her out?’
‘No. What do I say? What if she says no? How do I say that? Where do I take her?’ he continued to tug my shirt like a toddler would and his eyes didn’t leave me.
‘The same way you said, I like you.’
‘You mean I should mail that?’ he asked. His gaze never left me and his tone got more paranoid with every passing second.
‘You mailed that? You mailed that? Did you actually just mail that? And you have never talked about it, you motor mouth?’
Not again! No mails again!
‘Why? What is wrong with that? She sent me her piping stress sheets and I mailed her back saying I liked them. I even said I loved them.’
‘You liked her designs? You didn’t say you like her?’
‘NO! Obviously not. Are you crazy? I cannot say that. But I said I liked her work. I even said I loved it. Isn’t that enough?’
‘No, it is not! How do you plan to eventually kiss her? Or have sex with her? Or will you do it with her designs?’ DCE legacy strikes. Sex is all we can think and talk about. I am another ashamed alum of my college. Or is it me who defames the rest of our alums?
‘Deb? What are you talking about? There is still a lot of time for that and I will learn when the time comes. How can you even talk about that? It’s so …’ He was visibly scandalized. So was I; I had clearly overstepped a line and said something I shouldn’t have.
‘Fine, there is a lot of time to go. How old are you? And her?’
‘I am twenty-five, she is twenty-four.’
‘Oh, great! She is twenty-four already? When do you plan to say something? When she gets married? By Bihar standards, she is already overage, isn’t it?’
‘Don’t say that,’ he said and hung his head as if it was his fault. But he was a twenty-five-year-old virgin who was yet to have a proper conversation with a girl. I hadn’t met a lot of that kind around me. I knew a lot of people from my college who had started going to prostitutes for they couldn’t get laid legitimately.
We had switched places. He was not in charge now. I was. He was the trainee. I was comfortable again, even though I was the last person he should be receiving relationship advice from.
‘Anyway, we will figure something out,’ I said.
‘I hope we do. Now tell me, did you like anything in the office?’ he asked.
The process department had twice the number of girls than all the other departments, combined. No one was smart enough, though. After Avantika, my tastes had changed, too. I was spoilt. I was hers and I was ruined for other women.
I said nothing.
The girls are waiting.
Chapter 18
‘Deb, watch out. Open the first file in the second directory in the C drive,’ Amit shouted at me in whispers as he walked close behind a big, bulky, drowsy-eyed old man. I still hadn’t learnt how to do anything in my first two months at BHEL, except getting coffee for Amit from time to time. I pretty much did whatever he asked me to and stayed out of doing anything productive.
In BHEL, there were no parties, there were no gorgeous girls, and there were no office trips. It was an engineering firm, and as expected, the work environment was depressing, the employees boring, mostly guys, and sad ones—the ghissus. The gender ratio was abysmal. I had passed out from an engineering college to reach another. The same discussions. The same jokes. The same porn preferences.
I had attended a few training sessions taken by senior employees in the first few weeks. They had introduced us to the fundamental concepts of piping and other things that—to my surprise—no one listened to. There were eight new trainees in the piping department. Each one of them was dutifully told by their mentors that all classes were a sham. You learn everything on the job, was the buzz around the classes. I did not think it was necessary to talk to anyone else other than Amit and sometimes, Astha.
I did go around the office looking for people I could connect more with to talk to, but I found none. I tried initiating conversations with a few colleagues but soon lost interest. Avantika had left me in deep, deep trouble.
Just as I had opened the file, the oldie reached my cubicle and started to stare at my computer screen. He didn’t say anything and just stared at the strange combination of pipes that lay in front of me. He bent over and brought his face within microns of the monitor; his armpits stank of sour yogurt.
I had a look at those pipes, and at once, I realized it wasn’t my cup of tea. I started sharpening my pencil again.
‘So, working hard?’ he bawled in my ear.
‘Huh? Yes, sir.’ I stood and breathed.
‘Sharpening pencils won’t do. Do something. I know how you got here but don’t think it’s easy working here. You have to work to survive. You have to be smart and just working hard won’t do,’ he said as he leaned onto me.
Surviving hadn’t been too tough. All it meant was getting coffee and writing semi-mushy mails to Astha on behalf of Amit, which were wrenched out of all their mush once Amit edited them. The training period anywhere in the world is a honeymoon period. And just in case it’s a government office, you can be gone for a year and nobody would notice. Unless, of course, your father used to work in the same office.
He continued, ‘Get it? How is your dad? In Hyderabad? Whatever. Get back to work and I want to have your first isometric sheet done by Monday. I haven’t got even one yet.’ He turned to look at Amit and said, ‘I want a progress report on Debashish in a few days. Please make sure it is done as soon as possible.’
I was seeing this man for the first time and he had already started to run me into the ground. I just kept myself from sticking that pencil up his hair-
infested nose, which had more hair than his barren head.
‘Okay, sir.’
He went off.
‘Gosh! Now that was a narrow escape. He nearly had you in,’ Amit said.
‘Excuse me? Who the hell is he? I didn’t think anybody around me could be of any damn consequence. This is a government office! How anyone be so heavy-handed?’
‘No. Not anybody. He can be. He is just back from a tour. Mr Goyal is the one who was passed over for your dad’s promotion. So he won’t take kindly to you. He is the HOD.’
‘So? What can he do? He can’t possibly kick me out,’ I said. I was an employee of the Government of India. I had to be dead or mentally unstable to lose the job. Mentally unstable I was, but he would never know about Avantika.
‘He can,’ he said. ‘Till the time you are a trainee and on probation. This one year, he can. He will take your viva one year from now. He can easily kick you out then. So better be careful.’
This is just a temporary arrangement, I reminded myself.
‘Nothing will happen, especially when you are here. I am sure you will take care of me.’ I swirled around in my new chair. Amit and I were the first ones to get them as I had pestered the hell out of the store in-charge. It was better than what it’s description in the catalogue had promised. The Hamilton Swivel-Tilt Dining Chair features a diamond-shaped back and legs on rolling casters. The top of the back piece is a sleek ‘Brushed Faux Medium Cherry’ wood, while the frame is a ‘Matte Pewter and Bronze’ metal. This piece features curved armrests and a swivel and tilt design. Rolling casters provide easy mobility.
‘Deb! You are taking things too lightly. Did you read the manual I gave you yesterday? Obviously, you did not. What do you think you are doing? You haven’t even bothered to go to the site once. I tell you, you are going to be in big trouble. And how do you think you will do the pipe section he asked you to complete?’
‘How am I? What are you here for, genius? You are going to do it, not me.’ I broke my record of eight complete three-hundred-and-sixty degree revolutions and pushed even harder. I wasn’t taking things lightly. These chairs were little pieces of magic.
‘And what do I get this time for doing what you are supposed to do?’
‘A gift. A beautiful romantic gift. You want that? Or should I just start the pipe section? Maybe I am taking things too lightly. Maybe I should start working and not help you with Astha at all. We should all do what we are supposed to do and not meddle in other people’s affairs at all.’ I started to fiddle with the files.
‘Okay … okay, okay. Don’t touch those files; you will mess up the order. I need that. I will do it for you. What are you making for her? Is it expensive? That’s not a problem; I will pay you for that. But please make something good. When are we giving it?’
‘It will be good. Don’t you worry,’ I said. This was the usual. During the first two months, I wasn’t required to do anything other than type out mundane reports or fill out Excel tables. It was all the mentally numbing work that seniors didn’t want to do any more.
All the MTs were required to do that and more. Instead, Amit did everything for me for the return of my services in the Astha project. And that was fair in a way, too. Amit was too smart to be working in a government office. What used to take me hours to do was just a minute’s work for him. He tried really hard to teach me certain things, but I was too stubborn about letting nothing affect my ignorance. We were living out a symbiotic relationship. It was the only relationship I had at that point and it was what was keeping me sane.
‘So, are you shifting in today?’ I asked him. I badly needed a roommate. Even now, the moment I stepped out of the office, I was clouded by thoughts of Avantika. The intensity was much less now, though. Maybe. It had been three months since I had last contacted her but she was still very much around me all the time … I missed her. The laughs, the seductions, the touches, the winks. I missed it all. Still no movement on her social networking profiles. She had gone missing.
Nobody was a better choice than Amit for a roommate. He, too, had nothing much in his life. Everybody in the office who didn’t matter hated him. He was too smart for them to handle and for those who mattered, he was a gem. All the seniors loved him. I think they saw a little bit of themselves in him when they had joined, not for the lure of a lazy sinecure job, but the passion to do something. What did they make out of it? Nothing.
Most importantly, I had come to love him. He was a cute lost kid in love, who knew nothing about it. I was the kid in office, who wanted to know nothing about it. A few months had passed and Avantika had left a void I would never be able to fill. Amit tried hard to fill my days and keep me distracted. He had even made me start studying for the CAT examination again.
He knew I would fuck up my career if I were to stay at BHEL for more than year. I knew that too, but … There were still a few months to go for the exam and Amit was the only one who had the patience to remind me of that every day.
‘Yes, I am moving in today. The truck will arrive at eight thirty. Won’t it be so cool? Then I can call up Astha whenever I want to and you can tell me what all to say. Thanks, Deb. But I will pay you the rent. You will have to accept that, else I will not shift in.’
‘Fuck off, Amit. Either you get the house without the rent or you don’t get it.’
‘Okay, as you say. But—’
I stopped him. I refused, although the temptation to add to the meagre salary was great, but I had started to love him. Moreover, he was doing me a favour by staying with me.
‘Deb … Deb! Will we call her tonight? I mean, can we?’
‘Sure, Amit. Can you now please complete the sheet?’ I had been trying to make him call her since I had joined office but he had some or the other inexplicable reason not to call her. What would I say? I am too nervous? She is too beautiful for me. I am sure she is seeing someone else. What if she doesn’t like me over the phone?
But that night, we finally did. Amit left the office early that day to oversee the shifting. And I spent the rest of the day sharpening pencils. I couldn’t break my record on the swivelling chair and hit a plateau at eleven rotations.
‘What the fuck?’ I exclaimed. ‘Did you do all that? You know what? You have to be gay to do all this.’
He had cleaned up the entire flat. It wasn’t my place any more. The place had been a mess since Mom left. And not only did he clean up the room, he had also replaced all the flowers in the vases and put some where there weren’t any. But I should have expected that. He was the only one in the entire office who used a dustbin for pencil shavings. There was even a papier-mâché lamp that he had put in the drawing room. It suited the setting so much it seemed to have grown out of it. Avantika loved papier-mâché lamps.
‘Do you like it?’ he asked.
‘Do I like it? I love it. See, this is the reason I won’t take any rent from you. I don’t need a housemaid any more.’
‘Do you have a housemaid? This place didn’t look as if it had been cleaned in ages.’
‘No, I do not have one and I don’t want one.’
‘Never mind, now that I am here. Everything will be just fine,’ he said rubbing his hands together.
I hoped so. We spent the next few hours unpacking his stuff and placing it in his new cupboard. The house had started as a modest two-bedroom apartment, but then as we had grown in size, so had the flat. My parents extended our house wherever and however it possibly could until it ended as a huge three-bedroom flat with a humungous balcony, though we never felt it was big enough. Now, I shifted into the master bedroom and Amit shifted into mine.
I was relieved of the unpacking duty when he finally said that I wasn’t arranging things, I was stuffing them and adding to his work. I lay back then and watched him arrange his clothes, the idols and the photoframes in neat patterns. I wondered how people like him think. What makes them think that a perfectly, or almost perfectly arranged closet can be arranged in a better manner? Where do
es that thought originate? What drives them to do it? What difference does a neat closet make in their lives? If I do it, will it bring Avantika back? Just as I was slipping into arbitrary thoughts of Avantika, Amit brought me back to my senses.
‘So, do we call her up now? I have been waiting to do this for a year now. Please. Please. I promise to be your pipe-sheet slave all my life. Please do this. If I don’t do this today, I won’t ever be able to do it again.’
‘As if it’s me who has stopped you from doing so. Go ahead. Call her.’ I tossed the phone to him.
Are you crazy? A year? It took me three days to call Avantika up! And we had kissed before that!
Astha and Amit never talked to each other. They had the strangest relationship possible. They liked each other and everyone around them knew that. But they were downright terrified at the mere thought of talking to each other. Even during their lunch meeting, they would transform into dumb, smiling statues after the first few seconds of customary hellos. All my attempts to start a conversation fell on deaf ears.
The only one who would talk was Astha’s best friend, Neeti. I knew that Neeti had a crush on me. To make things worse, she made a thousand nails on a blackboard sound like pure symphony. She talked, rather shrilled and shrieked a lot more than required. I had decided I would hold her responsible if Amit and Astha never became a couple. She was irritating. Sweet but irritating.
‘Are you sure I should call her? Is this the right time? What if she is not awake? Maybe we shouldn’t. Or can I just send a message and ask her? What do I do?’ Amit repeated these things as he paced around the room.
‘Okay, I will call her. And then you can talk. Is that fine?’ I said as I stretched for the first time on my bed. For the last two months, I had been sleeping on the couch because I was too lazy to clear the newspapers and Dominos’ boxes strewn across the bed.
‘Yes, you can do that. But then don’t tell her I am here.’
‘Great. Then how do I ask her to talk to you? Telepathy?’
‘Okay, do whatever you want to. Do it quick.’ He was still shaking the foundations of my flat.
