Marry Me, Stranger

by Novoneel Chakraborty

  ‘It’s Ekansh,’ Rivanah said.

  ‘It’s asshole; that’s his real name from now,’ Ishita said. ‘Take the call and ask him to meet you today at the Oberoi mall.’

  The call turned to a missed call. Rivanah relaxed and said, ‘If he calls again...’

  Before she could complete, Ekansh called again.

  ‘Pick up the call, girl,’ Ishita urged.

  Rivanah picked up the call and said nothing.

  ‘I want to meet you and explain...’ Ekansh said but was cut short.

  ‘Today at Oberoi mall around two,’ Rivanah said in one breath and ended the call.

  ‘Better!’ Ishita quipped.

  ‘Are you sure I should meet him? I don’t want to.’

  ‘You don’t have to after this. And trust me, just give it back to him. You owe this much to yourself.’

  Rivanah understood. Next she typed a ‘thank you’ and sent it to the last unknown number the stranger had sent her a message from. She waited but got no response.

  Ishita had asked her to reach the mall an hour late than the fixed time. Rivanah did exactly that. Ekansh was a bit worked up when she reached the food court of the mall around three. Ishita too was with her.

  ‘You are late,’ Ekansh said.

  ‘You are an asshole,’ Rivanah retorted. ‘You have been in Mumbai all this time and I thought you flew from Bangalore for me. Only for me! What a fool you have made out of me Ekansh. Congrats!’

  ‘I swear I was going to tell you everything but...’

  ‘But your love for me stopped you, isn’t it? And exactly when were you going to tell me? When my dad had printed our marriage cards?’ She raised her voice to a level which he had not heard from her before.

  ‘Please, let’s talk like adults.’ He sounded defensive.

  ‘Stop patronizing me. And answer me, when were you going to tell me?’

  ‘Can I talk to you alone?’ He glanced at Ishita.

  ‘She stays with me.’

  ‘Okay, look I know I didn’t tell you that I was in Mumbai but that was because I didn’t want to upset you since you were about to join your new office. So I was waiting for the right time.’

  ‘Does it mean you never went to Bangalore?’

  ‘Of course I did. And that’s where I met Vishakha. I don’t know why or when I fell in love with her. I couldn’t believe it myself when it happened. Her company gave her a Mumbai location. I couldn’t stop myself and followed her here. But that doesn’t mean I can afford to lose you. Please try and understand.’

  ‘You were with me for four years Ekansh, and Vishakha’s been with you only for four months. You chose her and still you want me to understand?’ Rivanah said, appalled. Did he think she would hug him and say she still loved him because he cared so much about her happiness that he didn’t tell her he was cheating on her? Who was this person that she had been in love with? He suddenly seemed like someone whom she didn’t know one bit.

  ‘I came to your flat with the intention of telling you last week but you wanted to make love and I thought of not disappointing you since you had been waiting for it from a long time,’ Ekansh said.

  Rivanah noticed how ‘we wanted to make love’ had comfortably become ‘you wanted to make love’. She also noticed the way he was passively tagging himself as a poor guy who had made love to her only out of sympathy for her. If he was seriously the same person she was thinking of getting married to at some point in life, then there was something wrong with her.

  ‘Look, I think we can handle this without a break up,’ he said.

  ‘Does Vishakha know about us?’

  ‘She doesn’t know. But her knowing won’t change anything, will it? What’s going on between us is none of her business anyway,’ Ekansh said avoiding eye contact. ‘I love you and...’

  Rivanah slapped him hard right across his face to shut him up. His jaws dropped. A few people in the food court stopped short in their tracks. Ishita’s face glistened with a smile.

  ‘You have no idea what it is to be in love, Ekansh. My parents were ready to accept you as their son-in-law. What will I tell them? I thought you were mine. Only mine. What shall I tell myself? That I’m an idiot who doesn’t even know how to choose someone good for herself?’ Rivanah was choking.

  Ekansh’s phone rang. Before he could hide it, she noticed the caller’s name was Vishakha.

  ‘Yes, I’m coming,’ he said and cut the line.

  ‘Someone’s waiting for you Ekansh and that’s not me. Goodbye and have a happy life with your girl,’ said Rivanah and walked away. As Ekansh gaped at her walking away from him, Ishita pushed him by his chest and said, ‘She doesn’t know how to abuse so I say this on her behalf; you are a mother-fucking-monkey, a cunt with an STD, and an impotent bastard.’ Saying this, she dashed off.

  Rivanah knew forgetting someone was easier said than done. Emotional investments are subject to life risks. But it was something she thought she wouldn’t have to care about, after all Ekansh and she were the hyped FTC—the Fairy Tale Couple. Once inside her flat, she opened her wardrobe and one by one threw out all the gifts that Ekansh had given her into the dustbin and burnt the love letters he used to write for her in college. When she thought she had destroyed everything that reminded her of Ekansh she sat down in silence. In no time their memories started haunting her. And she knew this was something she would never be able to burn, delete, or throw away. The time they spent together, did it mean nothing to him? He said he didn’t know how he fell in love with Vishakha. Did he ever think about her when he was with her? Was she so much better than her that he forgot about her totally or did he purposefully subject her to this kind of insult by being in a relationship with another girl? And why did he make love to her when he wasn’t interested in her? It was like he had brought her to the room of love by promising her a beautiful future after which he locked the room and threw the keys away. And now she had nowhere to go. Ishita was right: what shopping is for girls, sex is for guys. Ekansh must have made the other girl feel beautiful as well by fucking her.

  With Ishita gone for a rave party, Rivanah felt all the more lonely. She logged on to her Facebook account to distract herself, but all she saw was her friends posting happy pictures with their loved ones. She hated them all and she hated herself more for hating them. She impulsively deactivated her account. She was tossing and turning on bed, telling herself repeatedly it was not the end of the world and the next moment doubting it herself when her phone buzzed with a message:

  Welcome.

  It was the stranger’s response to her ‘thank you’ in the morning from a new phone number.

  Rivanah immediately messaged him back:

  Why didn’t you tell me this before?

  Prompt came a reply: You can simply talk. I can hear you. I’ll reply by message.

  Rivanah sat up on her bed the moment she read the message; startled. For the next one hour she left no corner of the flat unturned—under the bed, the kitchen, the television stand, the balcony, the wardrobe, and where not. Finally, she moved the wardrobe to see if there was anything behind it but shrieked seeing several cockroaches. She put the wardrobe back in place. Sweaty and tired, Rivanah’s mind was still trying to guess how someone could hear her without being in the flat? She heard her phone buzz with a message:

  If you are done searching, you can talk.

  With a chill in her spine she spoke aloud looking nowhere in particular, ‘Since how long have you known about Ekansh and that girl?’ It was weird talking to someone she couldn’t see. Seconds later, the stranger’s message came:

  Since the time he came to Mumbai following her.

  ‘And why didn’t you tell me this before?’

  I wanted to hurt you real bad.

  ‘What? Why? What have I done to you?’ she said aloud.

  You didn’t learn to cook.

  ‘What nonsense!’

  If you are not badly hurt, you don’t learn. If you don’t learn, you don’t
grow. If you don’t grow, you don’t live. If you don’t live, you don’t know your worth. If you don’t know your worth, then what’s the point?

  ‘You would have shared this even if I had learnt to cook, isn’t it?’

  Maybe.

  ‘But my love for Ekansh was true. You know what the worst thing is? Not that I have to live with the fact that Ekansh cheated on me but the fact that I won’t ever be able to love anyone with the kind of blindness, innocence, and selflessness that I loved him. How do I come to terms with that?’ She didn’t know why she was saying all these things to a stranger but she wanted to talk, she wanted a vent and some sort of answers.

  How: that’s your business. I’ll tell you why: heartbreaks are like those pestering advertisements that make you believe a particular product is important for you. They create a false space in you and convince you that it’s your need. Ekansh isn’t important. You are. There’s more to you as a person and in your life than cribbing for a guy who can only limit you from reaching your real worth.

  ‘What is my real worth? I’m a simple girl who only wanted to work till she got married to the guy of her dreams and then raise a family with him, grow old with him, and probably die in his arms. I know it sounds like a story from Mills & Boons but that’s me.’

  That’s NOT you. You shall soon know who you really are.

  ‘Huh? But who are you? Why are you helping me?’ Rivanah said and after a hiatus added, ‘I want to meet you.’

  Anonymity is power, Mini, the stranger replied.

  12

  The sudden break-up led to a certain organic change in Rivanah. She abhorred spending time alone, knowing well her ‘me-time’ would invariably be accompanied by the memories of Ekansh. And it always put her in the middle of a dichotomy: to cry or not to cry.

  Both Ishita and Pooja asked her to move on but nobody told her how. Human beings are designed in a way that they always live with one half of their self in the past and the other half in the present. For Rivanah, the problem was that the past was about Ekansh’s presence and her present was about his absence. She couldn’t forget her past and she couldn’t accept her present. Though Rivanah had blocked Ekansh on Facebook, time and again she would first activate her profile, unblock him, check his latest profile and cover pictures and whatever that she could see without being in his friend list, and block him again conveniently. It only meant he still mattered to her. It made her hate herself even more. She knew he ditched her and still he mattered to her. What depressed her the most was the fact that Ekansh never understood that in love one’s own choice affects the other the most. With one single choice of his, he had turned her life upside down. Whenever the thought of Ekansh and Vishakha invaded her, she used to put heavy make-up on and click selfies only to post them on Facebook in order to garner more and more likes. The likes and comments made her feel important. It was her way of defending her own pride which had been punctured.

  In office, Rivanah started working even harder. She robbed her own free space and time for herself. She had secretly bought the same sleeping pills which Ishita used to take once in a while. Almost every night after dinner, Rivanah would pop one before crashing on the bed. The pills gave her a sound sleep even though she knew it would harm her in the long run. But then, who gives a damn about the long run, she thought, when living one single day without feeling miserable about myself is becoming an achievement? The truth was the roots of her commitment to Ekansh had entered so deep within her that pulling them out wasn’t possible without developing cracks within her own self. And she knew well those cracks won’t let any other root to develop,no matter how much time went by.

  As days changed to weeks, Rivanah discovered certain behavioural changes in her as well. Earlier, if any guy would glance at her fishing for her attention, she would pretend the guy didn’t exist. Now she would glance back as if she was hooked to him and wouldn’t mind if he came and talked to her. She would reciprocate politely but later would take pleasure in avoiding the guy as if nothing ever happened. Ekansh’s action had taught her how unimportant she was to him and the one thing she would never let any guy do to her again was make her feel that way, she promised herself.

  As a mark of gratitude to the stranger one day, Rivanah decided to cook something simple. She made dal, rice, and aloo-matar. It was below satisfactory but tasting her own preparation made her happy and worthwhile. Her mother couldn’t believe when she told her about it.

  ‘Did Ekansh ask you to cook?’ Mrs Bannerjee said.

  ‘Why does Ekansh have to tell me everything? I did it myself,’ Rivanah said in irritation.

  ‘Don’t get angry Mini. Your baba will be so happy to know that you have started taking interest in cooking.’

  ‘It tastes nothing great but by the time I visit Kolkata next, I shall surely improve.’

  And improve she did. Listening to songs and preparing a new dish in her free time worked as a therapy for her agitated soul. In a span of a month and a half, she became an expert at preparing mouth-watering butter chicken. Ishita was floored when she tasted it for the first time.

  ‘I would have married you right now if I was a man,’ she said.

  Rivanah laughed out and messaged the stranger that she now knew how to prepare the dishes he had asked her to. But there was no response.

  On weekends, following the break up, Ishita made sure Rivanah accompanied her to the nightclubs.

  ‘At least have fun before your parents get a husband for you.’

  The edge that Ishita balanced her life on was a temptation to begin with for Rivanah and now she had the perfect motivation to go ahead and anchor her life beside that edge.

  While Ishita danced and openly hit on men in nightclubs and pubs, Rivanah preferred drinking alone sitting by a corner and return to her flat totally sloshed, cursing Ekansh with newer and unapologetically vulgar slangs every time. Once she had written the name ‘Ekansh’ on her pillow with her lipstick after coming back zoned-out by Tequila and then had spent an hour cutting the pillow into innumerable pieces wailing to herself.

  The noise at the disc, the disconnection that booze brought her, and the freedom that she chose for herself opened a new world for her, both outside and within. Lying to her parents on the phone became a habit. It was like a rebirth for her. The earlier Rivanah was someone who used to live by rules. The new Rivanah lived by fucking those rules. She soon developed severe mood swings because of which she sometimes skipped her meals for days and at times ate like there was no tomorrow. She didn’t look sick but she didn’t look normal either. She laughed her heart out at trivial matters, embarrassing everyone around, while remained neutral on actual jokes. One day Prateek spotted her in the office canteen sitting alone by a table and with a huge pile up of food that aroused his suspicion.

  ‘Hey, is there anyone else with you?’ he asked, not sure whether to sit down or not.

  ‘No. Why?’ She was talking to him after a long time. They did greet each other once or twice during their casual encounters in office, but that was about it.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said deciding not to probe her about the extra food. ‘May I?’ He placed a hand on the chair opposite her.

  ‘Sure.’ Rivanah didn’t look at him. Prateek took his seat beside her.

  ‘Anything the matter? You look...different,’ he said.

  ‘Where have you been all these days, Prateek? I didn’t see you much in office,’ she said this time linking her eyes to his.

  ‘Thanks for asking.’ A halo of happiness appeared around him. ‘I went home for a cousin’s marriage,’ he said, ‘But what’s up with you really?’

  ‘Nothing, why?’

  ‘I can see something is wrong.’

  Really? Can he really feel my pain? Is he that special? Rivanah thought and quietly continued with her heavy lunch.

  ‘Ekansh has broken-up with you, isn’t it? I don’t see him in your friend list anymore. In fact you too are sometimes there and sometimes not on Facebook,’ he
added without knowing how she would react to his covert stalking.

  He hasn’t stopped snooping around, Rivanah thought and then spat out the bolus on her plate. She gulped a mouthful of Coke, rinsing her mouth once.

  ‘Ekansh didn’t break up. I broke up. He cheated,’ she said with a straight face.

  ‘Wow, sounds like one of those campus novels written by college goers these days; I Broke Up, He Cheated’ Prateek said beaming to himself.

  ‘Would you have cheated on me Prateek if you were my boyfriend?’ She didn’t know why she asked him that.

  For a moment Prateek thought he didn’t hear her correctly. His stare urged her to repeat it.

  ‘Forget it,’ she said. ‘Now I know how you must have felt when I rejected you in school.’

  ‘It’s okay Rivanah. Even if you don’t love me, I’ll always love you.’

  With that one statement, Prateek changed the way Rivanah looked at him since her joining Tech Sky Technologies. Here was a guy who loved her even when he knew she probably would never be his. And there was a guy who knew she was his and yet...she smiled at the irony of it.

  ‘What are you doing this evening? Want to catch the latest superhero film? Heard its better than its first part,’ he asked with the same excitement that he always exhibited in front of her, the excitement she earlier interpreted as dangerous but which was now turning infectious.

  ‘Let’s go,’ she said.

  After that evening, going out with Prateek became a habit. It introduced her to yet another side of her own self: Rivanah realized that with Prateek she could choose when to be good and when to play a bitch. Such a choice wasn’t there with Ekansh because she loved him. She was with Prateek only because she wanted to prove to her own self that she wasn’t as undesirable as Ekansh made her feel. That she too was capable of having a pet who could do whatever she wished him to only to gain a little attention from her. She knew it was mean of her to be doing something like this, but the forbidden pleasure of doing it overcame the morals associated with it.

  They went out only when she wanted to, but when Prateek would request for some coffee-time together, she had her excuses ready. When she Whatsapped him that she was feeling like having an ice cream at midnight, Prateek would ride his bike to her apartment carrying two cones. But when he’d ask her to dine together, she’d have a sudden headache. There were times of self-introspection too when she asked herself if what she was doing was at all justified. After which the sight of Ekansh clasping the girl’s hand in Cafe Basilico would flash in her mind and she would convince herself if what Ekansh did to her was justified, then this too was more than justified.