Marry Me, Stranger

by Novoneel Chakraborty

  On the second last Saturday of the month, Rivanah woke up late in the evening with hunger cramming her stomach. She opened the refrigerator but there was nothing to eat. She called Meghna who told her she was in a movie theatre with a friend and would be late. She also informed her that the cook had taken a day off. The late relaying of information angered Rivanah but she didn’t say much. She called the Borivali Biryani Centre and ordered a Chicken Tikka Biryani for herself. It was only after she had ordered the biryani that she realized she had run out of cash. She changed quickly and went out to the ATM across Vishnu Dham. She took out the cash, tore the receipt slip, threw it in the dustbin, and turned to go back to the flat when she noticed a piece of white cloth taped on the glass of the ATM’s door from outside. It wasn’t there when she entered.

  ‘Dammit!’ she muttered removing the tape on the cloth.

  7 days more. It was stitched on it with black thread.

  Rivanah looked around crushing the cloth in her grasp and exclaimed loudly, ‘Fuck you!’

  Few passers-by gave her a what’s-wrong-with-you glance and then forgot about it.

  7

  Rivanah was sitting alone in the office cafeteria, during one of her monotonous days, tossing the fruits in her bowl when Prateek approached her.

  ‘May I please join you?’ He said it with such politeness that Rivanah couldn’t say no. All these days Prateek had maintained a distance even though she knew he was keeping an eye on her.

  Prateek thanked her and sat opposite her with his plate of masala idli and a paper-glass of filter coffee.

  ‘Please don’t scold me, but these past few days I have been noticing you looking pensive and disturbed about something. Is everything all right?’

  So he was noticing me, after all! Rivanah thought and looked at him. If both of them didn’t have a history in school and he was a tad less psychotic like he was in that moment, she would have found him cute.

  ‘Anything troubling you?’ he asked with genuine concern.

  She wasn’t sure if she could trust him with any personal information.

  ‘You can tell me,’ he said grasping her hand. The psycho Prateek was back. Rivanah instantly pulled her hand back and said, ‘It’s just that I’m finding it difficult to live with my cousin and her husband.’

  ‘Why, what happened? Aren’t they good people?’

  ‘They are but I think they need space and more privacy which they don’t get with me around.’ Rivanah lied on purpose.

  ‘Hmm.’ He cut a piece of the Idli, dipped it in sambar, and put it in his mouth.

  ‘Why don’t you shift home?’ he suggested.

  It did occur to her to shift to some PG but when she told her parents about it, they vehemently opposed it saying staying alone with unknown people wasn’t safe. Though Rivanah wasn’t convinced, she agreed only since she didn’t want the trouble that comes with shifting houses.

  ‘It’s too much of trouble,’ she lamented to Prateek.

  ‘I agree, but when you have a true friend, you don’t have to worry about it.’ It was the mild Prateek again.

  Rivanah had to take a decision within seconds; yes or no. If she said yes, Prateek would invariably tell her he would take care of her shift and if she said no, then she would have to go back home—day after day—and try to adjust with her volatile cousin and her maniacal husband which she knew had tested her patience to the hilt already.

  ‘Can you really help me?’

  ‘Of course! All you need to do is check the availability of flats on sulekha.com or magicbricks.com. You can also check certain Facebook pages for availability.’

  It sounded easy. It also meant she wouldn’t have to work as hard as she thought earlier.

  Once home, she called Ekansh and discussed her plans of moving out with him.

  ‘Wow! The next time I’m there, we shall stay all alone.’

  ‘I’ll have roommates hon.’

  ‘We shall lock them out.’

  After the nod from Ekansh, she logged into the websites Prateek had told her about, posted her requirement on one of the ‘Flat for rent in Mumbai’ Facebook pages and shortlisted five places in Goregaon and Malad that were reasonably close to her office and within her budget. She called on the phone numbers listed in the advertisement on the websites and got a favourable reply from some, deciding to check out the places for herself the coming weekend. The next day when Prateek asked her if she had zeroed in on any place, she said, ‘Few of them. I’m thinking of checking them out this weekend.’

  ‘Wonderful. I’ll be there with you. You shouldn’t go around alone.’

  Rivanah didn’t say no because she indeed was sceptical of visiting the places alone and had hoped that Prateek would come forward to help her on his own. She responded with a smile of acknowledgement. By Sunday evening, Rivanah was sure where she was going to shift: Sai Baba Apartment in Malad west. The agent informed her that she would share the fully furnished flat with two other girls. When she told Meghna about her shift, Meghna didn’t ask her the reason for leaving and instead apologized to her.

  ‘Please don’t apologize Meghna di. You let me stay here for so long. I should thank you actually.’

  Meghna smiled at her, the first time she had done so since Rivanah moved in. They were boiling milk in the kitchen to prepare some coffee for themselves.

  ‘But you have to do me one last favour, Meghna di,’ Rivanah said.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Please talk to mumma and baba. They’ll never support my shifting,’ Rivanah pleaded.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll talk to them,’ Meghna said caressing her cheeks. Rivanah hugged her tight.

  ‘Can I ask you something di?’ she said breaking the hug.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Were you sure you loved Aadil da when you married him?’

  Looking into her eyes, Meghna tried to decipher the reason for the query. ‘Completely,’ she said after an instant.

  ‘And what do you think now?’

  ‘I think love is complicated. It doesn’t let you leave your partner alone when you actually should and it makes you own him when you really should not.’

  ‘Does marriage change a relationship, di?’

  ‘It’s not about marriage. It’s about time. Dating and all is fine, but when you start living with someone twenty-four-seven it sure does test one’s true feelings for the other. Also, how you handle monotony in a relationship says a lot about how you basically feel for the other person. Not every couple fights like we do. Moreover, Aadil and I were too young when we married, so all of it seemed like a magic carpet back then but now we know our relationship is nothing but a dirty doormat.’

  Rivanah sensed remorse in the last sentence.

  ‘I love someone di. He works in Bangalore. We are college friends.’

  ‘I know.’

  Rivanah’s facial muscles tightened hoping she didn’t hear the phone sex sessions she had with Ekansh.

  ‘Don’t worry, nobody will know,’ Meghna assured her. Rivanah gave her a tight, awkward smile.

  ‘Do you guys want to get married?’ Meghna poured the boiled milk in the two cups containing coffee powder.

  ‘We do. Not immediately but we definitely want to get married. But I’m always scared what if something bad happens and I can’t marry him? It’s not good to be so emotionally dependent on someone, is it di?’

  ‘Why not, especially if both of your eally love each other?’ Meghna said stirring the cups with a spoon.

  ‘Hmm.’

  The following Saturday, Rivanah shifted to the furnished two bedroom flat in Malad west. Though Prateek offered his help, she turned him down politely because she didn’t have much luggage. It was Aadil who drove her to the flat. This was the only time she was alone with him. During her time in Vishnu Dham, she had always spoken to Aadil in Meghna’s presence. He seemed to be a person who took his own sweet time to open up. So far she had not understood what he was really like.

  Th
e elevator was undergoing maintenance when she arrived with her luggage at Sai Baba Apartments. The flat was on the second floor so she didn’t have much trouble climbing up. Rivanah pressed the doorbell of her new flat and waited. Someone opened the door for her and said with a straight face, ‘Welcome Mini.’

  Rivanah wasn’t prepared for this.

  8

  By Mumbai’s standard it was a rather spacious flat. While Rivanah got the drawing room, the other two girls—Ishita Rana and Asha Pradhan—took a room each. Both girls seemed to belong to different planets. Rivanah instantly took a liking to Ishita even though she did not have a lot in common with her. Ishita was fiercely independent and audaciously modern. She consumed an average of a box of cigarettes a day and all her water bottles contained 80 percent Vodka and 20 percent Sprite. Ishita worked in a travel company and would turn up in her office half-drunk saying she couldn’t focus unless she tasted Vodka. Though she hailed from a small place—Pathankot—she could give any big city girl a run for their money. She was debonair, sharp, and a fashion freak. She had six tattoos and two piercings on her body. There were people who merely exist and then there were people who lived, Rivanah observed, but Ishita seemed to fly through her life with no attachment, no care, and absolutely no plan.

  ‘People judge the unknown with their knowledge of the known. I take up the unknown head-on because the known is so damn boring,’ Ishita told her ten minutes after their first meet. Rivanah didn’t exactly know what she meant but understood probably it only meant she loved to live without any rules of the society.

  Asha Pradhan, on the other hand, was someone who was acutely secretive. She cooked her own food even though Ishita and Rivanah had opted for a cook. Neither knew where she actually worked or hailed from. She was out before the two woke up in the morning and when she returned in the evening, she kept herself locked up in her room. When Rivanah came to the flat for the first time and Asha referred to her as ‘Mini’, Rivanah had asked her how she knew her nickname.

  ‘I looked at your profile on Facebook. A comment on one of your cover pictures had that name. I always have to know everything about my flatmate.’

  But you share nothing about yourself, Rivanah thought. She wouldn’t have been surprised if one day someone told her that Asha was part of some occult group who were perhaps conspiring to bring the devil into the world.

  In fact, one night, when Rivanah found the door to Asha’s room slightly ajar, she peeped in to take a look out of curiosity. She saw her surrounded by candles sitting in a vajrasana pose in the centre of her room with a towel wrapped around her bosom and her dishevelled hair covering her face. She maintained a distance from her since then.

  While Rivanah secretly admired the free bird that Ishita was, the latter became protective of her because she knew Rivanah hadn’t seen life as one should in order to stop taking it seriously. Rivanah had got a non-judgemental friend in the form of Ishita while the latter had got a soul-sister in the former. Within a few weeks, the girls bonded deeply.

  One Friday, after Rivanah was done with her dinner, she saw Ishita dressed up like a sexy doll in a short yellow dress and matching stilettos.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Rivanah asked.

  ‘Hype, Bandra,’ Ishita quipped clicking a selfie with a pout standing in front of the wardrobe mirror in Rivanah’s room.

  ‘Shopping?’

  ‘Bleh!’ she said. ‘It’s a nightclub, yaar. And listen, I may not come back tonight so don’t panic. Sleep in my room and keep the door locked. I don’t trust this Asha, okay? For all you know, she may be a despo lesbo!’

  ‘Alright, but where will you be for the whole night?’

  ‘Wherever my boyfriend takes me.’

  ‘I never knew you had one.’ Rivanah’s surprise was genuine.

  ‘One? Excuse me, I have two healthy ones,’ Ishita said adjusting her breasts with her eyes fixed on the mirror.

  ‘I meant boyfriend!’

  ‘Lol. I know. But then I myself didn’t know I had one till a night before. Connected with him on Facebook.’

  ‘And you love him?’

  ‘Love?’ She turned around to look at Rivanah as if she said something blasphemous. ‘Who said anything about love?’

  ‘Do you mean you are going to have a one-night stand?’ Rivanah said in shock. Ishita laughed out.

  ‘God! You sound so terrorized! Yes, I do mean exactly that; a one-fucking-night-stand.’

  ‘It’s not worth it.’ Rivanah couldn’t believe how quickly she had turned judgemental of her roomie.

  ‘Oh-ho, someone’s experienced, huh!’ Ishita teased her.

  ‘Shut up! I have a boyfriend. And I’m loyal to him. I hate one-night stands anyway.’

  ‘You hate something you haven’t even tried yet. That’s why I say society is such a bitch. It prepares us to have an opinion about something we have no clue about.’

  ‘I hate it and that’s why I never had it.’

  ‘Well, to each his own. Can I borrow your perfume darling?’ Ishita asked after she was done honing herself in the mirror.

  ‘Yeah, okay.’ Rivanah opened the wardrobe and gave her the perfume. Ishita applied it quickly and left.

  Ekansh had a night shift that night, hence he wasn’t available on phone. Asha didn’t turn up that night either, so Rivanah slept in the drawing room with the lights on. In the morning, she woke up with a strong urge to pee. Still sleepy-eyed, she went to the bathroom to relieve herself. She opened the door of the bathroom and saw a butt-naked guy standing with his back to her and peeing. She let out a loud scream and scampered to Ishita’s room.

  ‘Ishu wake up! There’s a naked man in our flat.’

  Ishita didn’t budge a bit.

  ‘Ishu!’ She shook her hard.

  Ishita turned to look at her drowsily. ‘He didn’t have a place to go to. I brought him here,’ said Ishita casually and flipped the other way.

  ‘Is he retarded? Doesn’t he know how to shut a door and pee?’ The sight had truly robbed Rivanah off her sleep.

  ‘Ask him,’ Ishita said and closed her eyes. The guy peeped inside the room. Rivanah shut her eyes tight.

  ‘Sorry. My underwear is lying beside you. Could you please...’ he said.

  Rivanah opened one of her eyes, picked up the underwear in disgust with the tip of her fingers, and threw it at him. When the underwear clad guy came into the room, Rivanah stood up, turned around, and with her back to the guy slowly moved outside. It was for the first time she had seen a stark naked guy that close. The image stayed with her. Later in the morning she shared the incident with Ekansh.

  ‘Ishita brought home a guy last night,’ she told him over phone.

  ‘Is she mad or what? Doesn’t she know there are two more girls living with her?’

  ‘It’s okay. The guy had nowhere to go so...’

  ‘It’s not okay. Ask your roomie not to repeat it again or else you would complain to the landlord. Alright?’

  Rivanah was quiet. She thought she would tell Ekansh how funny it was to see a butt-naked guy but she decided to omit it lest he ended up asking her to shift some place else immediately.

  ‘Alright?’ Ekansh repeated.

  ‘Alright.’

  Rivanah agreed with Ekansh but she couldn’t confront Ishita about it. Somewhere deep within her, Rivanah felt Ishita did what she herself wished to do but couldn’t: going to nightclubs, dating guys on a hunch without emotional attachment, living a carefree life with nobody to question. She remembered how at the end of every term-exam in school students were provided with report cards. As an adult too she carried a report card for every action of hers. If she went to a nightclub, she knew, her parents and Ekansh would fail her. Of course she could have gone without telling anybody but that was something she wasn’t prepared to do. Or trained to do. Even if it was talking to a boy during her teenage years, her parents had to know who exactly the boy was and what his parents did and where they lived. Coming from that kind of a lif
e and now looking at Ishita, she only could adore her. Rivanah knew she would never be able to approach the edge on which Ishita lived her life. It wasn’t that she wanted to make that edge her life but she did miss the kind of freedom which allowed one to do as his or her heart said. Maybe if she was given the freedom, she wouldn’t have gone to pick up guys at random but that freedom, that right to live the way she wanted was what she coveted. More so after knowing Ishita.

  Rivanah did try once to talk about it with Ekansh telling him that she too wanted to go to a nightclub, but he came down on her in a way she didn’t expect him to.

  ‘Promise me you aren’t going to a nightclub. I’ll take you when I’m in Mumbai or when you come to Bangalore.’

  ‘Will it make you insecure if I go there alone or with friends?’

  ‘Shut up, it’s not about me. It’s not safe to go there alone.’

  ‘I won’t go alone. And not everyone who goes to a nightclub gets brutalized. Even you go but I didn’t say anything ever.’

  ‘I’m a guy. Do you have any idea what you are saying?’

  That was the end of the discussion. She didn’t like the chauvinist streak in Ekansh. It was something which was there in her father too. Whenever she wore a dress which was slightly bold, her father made sure to complain about the younger generation’s dressing sense. It disgusted her but in the end she consoled herself saying perhaps her father and Ekansh were right—that it wasn’t a safe place for girls. But she also knew the fuzz that made life all the more attractive was beyond that line of safety. Every time Ishita showed her the selfies she clicked at pubs and nightclubs, Rivanah would get upset. Soon an opportunity arrived when Ishita came home with two passes to a show one Saturday night.

  ‘Darling, I have passes for DJ Notti tonight. Get dressed up doll, together we shall fall!’ Ishita said in a rapper’s tone.