The taxi driver does a good job. Almost half an hour later, Nivrita’s taxi stops by an old looking apartment. Neel’s taxi also comes to a hault a few meters behind it. Neel pays up and comes out just when Nivrita too is coming out from her taxi.
‘Nivrita!’ Neel screams. She stops by the gate of the high-rise and turns to look at him.
‘I’m sorry. Don’t do this.’
‘Every dog has an affinity for a particular bone that it will never let go of. I knew you would come running behind me because the one particular bone you desperately want is in my hands.’
Neel doesn’t like the way she puts it. It has a dehumanizing tone to it. But it’s a fact. His bone of getting published is in her hands. Or so she has convinced Neel. Hence, he remains quiet.
‘When I said we can live-in, I didn’t mean we have to shift to your place. You can stay with me.’
As they enter the apartment campus, he looks up and notices there’s an arch over the gate and on it is written:
SHARADA HEIGHTS
Instead of the elevator, they take the stairs on Nivrita’s insistence. Her flat is on the top floor—fifth—and yet they are taking the stairs.
While climbing one floor after another, Neel has the same kind of sensation he had when Nivrita, weeks ago, had taken him to the deserted house where she played the same music on a guitar similar to what Titiksha often played for him. He feels like he has been in this building before, like he has climbed these steep stairs before. Suddenly he has a feeling there should be a flat which has a Ganesha Idol atop its main door. Neel keeps an eye on every flat’s door as they take the stairs. It’s on the third floor that Neel sees a flat’s door which has a Ganesha Idol on it. It looks old but it’s there and weirdly enough Neel was expecting it to be there. ‘Neel,’ says Nivrita. He is on the third floor while she is in-between the fourth and the fifth floor.
‘I may be reborn again. But I’ll never change my love for you.’ Saying so, she moves up to the fifth floor. Why did she say such a thing all of a sudden? Neel wonders. It’s so out of context. Also, it’s so not a place to talk about life and re-birth.
Neel hears someone unlocking a door on the fifth floor. He starts ascending the stairs once again. This time with a laboured gait. Every time Neel tries to uncover a thing, he feels something pushing him to shift focus. A day before he thought he would unearth why his college changed its location, and he stumbled on Titiksha’s murder. Now a minute back he was desirous to know how and why did he expect the Ganesh Idol to be present atop one of the doors, Nivrita tells him something mysterious about her love for him. Her love for him? Love? Nivrita loves him? He isn’t convinced. Nivrita never looked like she can love any one person in present life, never mind life after it.
As Neel reaches the small space between the stairs connecting the two floors, he notices Nivrita busy unlocking the door of her flat.
‘But in every birth my love for you will be predatory,’ Nivrita says and unlocks the door. Predatory love, Neel wonders, that’s more like Nivrita.
‘Welcome home,’ she smiles as if she has been waiting for this moment since a long time. Next she disappears inside her flat. Neel climbs the rest of the stairs and comes in as well.
He didn’t expect the flat to be as dark as it is. There are thick brown curtains covering the open windows. A 42-inch LED Sony Bravia beside the window and myriad books. Neel can’t guess what those books are about since he doesn’t go near the bookshelf. Their spine looks old and somewhat distorted, almost as if they have been read again and again. A commissioning editor for a publishing house, obviously, has to be a voracious reader. Neel goes closer to the bookshelf and caresses the books. There’s dust on the spine. Some of it sticks to his fingertips. Seems like she hasn’t read them in some time now. Strange, Neel wonders, and keeps searching for books by Word Tree publishing, the company where Nivrita works. There’s none.
‘Don’t you keep any books from your own publishing house?’ Neel says still trying to find Word Tree books.
‘The latest ones are by the television. And the rest are in office.’
Neel turns to notice that by the television stand are kept two piles of books. He goes and picks one up. It’s by an author named Maninder Jadeja and the book is called Let’s Play Bf-Gf. He notices the other books; each one has a funny name.
‘My baby, my life’.
‘She crushed my heart’.
‘I’m sad, he screwed my love’.
Neel doesn’t even know when his lips have stretched into a smile. Soon, Word Tree would publish his book as well.
Ex by Neel Chatterjee. For a moment he forgets where he is and why.
‘Why don’t you change, Neel? You are spending the night here anyway,’ Nivrita speaks up from the kitchen.
‘Am I?’
‘Of course. What will do in your flat alone?’
He thinks of Titiksha’s pieces lying in the refrigerator and shrugs. He feels happy to have followed Nivrita to her place. Going to his parents’ place to stay the night would have piqued their interest.
‘Yeah, sure. I’ll stay over. But won’t your boyfriend have a problem if he finds out?’
‘Boy-mate Neel.’ Nivrita appears in the hall room with a Budweiser beer can.
‘Sorry, boy-mate.’
‘I told you he is acting mad these days. He hasn’t been here since a week or so.’
‘Okay. But I don’t have a spare set of clothes.’
‘You’ll find a few knickers on the hook behind the bedroom door.’
Neel expects her to say more since knickers will only take care half of his physical privacy.
‘What? You really want to wear anything else in this hot and sticky weather?’
As if Neel has a say when Nivrita has decided something one his behalf.
‘I guess not.’
‘The bedroom is that way.’ Nivrita points with one hand.
Neel goes inside the bedroom. As he is about to enter the room, he notices another room adjacent to it. The door is slightly ajar. A quick peep tells him that there’s a table on which there’s a laptop and a lamp. Probably where Nivrita reads manuscripts and works, he thinks to himself.
On the hook behind the door, Nivrita had said. Neel locks the door and checks the wall behind it. There’s a wooden plate which has four hooks pinned on it. The first hook has a tee hanging on it. The second has two knickers. The third has a trouser along with a kurta. And the fourth has…Neel can’t believe his eyes. From the fourth hook hangs a police uniform. On it is a name badge on which is written: Parimal Biswas.
‘After you freshen up a bit, we can continue with the story. What say Neel?’ he hears Nivrita say.
For a moment Neel feels he has no voice.
FROM NEEL’S MANUSCRIPT
15
Neel didn’t want to spread rumours about our intimacy but then he also didn’t want us to be tagged as a TGIF couple. Neel agreed to my suggestion, even if it was reluctantly so. We decided to lie to our classmates that we had in fact made-out. Some of his friends knew that he was supposed to meet me in the classroom after school. So Neel decided to tell his friends that we made-out in the classroom itself. I was okay with it for at least we could be together in school without being mocked at. Maybe we were both too naive to gauge the ill-effects of the rumour. We only wanted to give our relationship some oxygen by shutting up our classmates.
Neel went ahead and confessed to Avni’s boyfriend that we had made-out in the classroom itself. It was two days later that I saw the first ramification of the rumour. In the girls’ toilet, just after the assembly, I saw it written on the wall in a very noticeable manner: ‘Titiksha of XI science has a fucked cunt!’ The statement was accompanied by a vulgar sketch. I immediately tried to scratch it out. I wondered if the same was written about Neel in the boys’ toilet. I went to the class and told Neel about it. He said he hadn’t seen anything as such in the boys’ toilet but promised to check. During recess he said the same
thing was written on one of the walls of the boys’ toilet as well. What surprised me was even in the boys’ toilet it was my name scribbled along with the vulgar sketch and not his. As if it was only I who had supposedly made-out. When I asked Neel if he had scratched it off, he said no. I told him he should have.
‘But what’s the problem? Let it be. Just because someone says something doesn’t mean it’s true.’ He had a point alright but I would have liked it if he had scratched that disgusting thing off the wall. He understood my predicament and said, ‘Alright I will strike off your name. Fine?’
I gave him a flying kiss.
After school when I went to the girls’ toilet, I got the shock of my life. The same statement now was all over the wall. Somebody had replicated the initial statement and sketched a hundred times over. It seemed like a slap right across my face. Even if I tried to, I couldn’t rub it off. The wall was full of them. I went to one of the maids working in the school, brought her in, and requested her to wash off the graffiti if possible. She agreed but asked what it was that was written on the wall. I made something up.
While I was waiting impatiently for Neel near the school gate, after school, trying to frame in my mind how exactly I should share the toilet issue and ask him if we should report it to our class teacher or not, I saw Neel waving at me. I waved back. As he came towards me, Avni stopped him. They were talking and I noticed Neel smiling about something and then Avni hit him on his shoulder lovingly. Lovingly! Here I was going to tell Neel that maybe Avni was behind the vulgar graffiti and there he was, smiling alongside her. I marched towards them and very stupidly caught hold of Avni’s shirt collar and asked why she was doing it. She was obviously taken aback and so was Neel. He started yelling at me, saying that I was hurting her but I didn’t leave her until Neel forcefully took off my hand from her collar. She feigned innocence. It irked me the way she was playing the sympathy game with him, as if I was the bitch breaking her life apart.
‘You should learn to behave Titiksha!’ Neel shouted. I stopped. I looked around to realize most of the students were gaping at me as if I was some crazy soul. I regained my composure and simply walked off from there.
At night when I had cooled down a little, I felt ashamed at my reaction. Whatever it was, I shouldn’t have gotten physical with Avni. It must have given a very wrong image of me to Neel. I was sick and tired of acting abruptly like a possessed soul. The way Neel raised his voice against me felt worse than the graffiti on the wall. I wanted to apologize to both Neel and Avni. The whole incident exposed a side of me which I had only seen in Avni till then. When Neel and I had just met, I couldn’t grasp why exactly Avni was feeling jealous of me, and now seeing the two together in school today, I felt the same. Was I being possessive of Neel just like I had accused Avni of being the same once? Had I started to treat him as my property like Avni was doing when I stepped in? My worst fear at this point of time was what if Neel turned towards Avni because I was acting the way she was acting before? Love did the same thing to me as it did to her. Does it do the same thing to everyone? I tried to be honest with myself. I was being possessive and aggressive in school because I was still not sure about him. I mean I was sure about him but I wasn’t sure if he was sure about me. Hence my insecurity kept me on my toes all the time and pushed me to stupidly grab Avni’s shirt’s collar that day.
‘You can’t hold onto anything; especially that which is not yours. And what really is yours, will remain yours irrespective of the fact you hold onto it or not.’
I turned on my bed to see Yo-didun reading aloud from a book. I didn’t share the incident with her but maybe she had guessed it from my grim look what could be the issue. We shared a smile and I turned my back to her. I would apologize to Neel, and if he says, to Avni too. I couldn’t afford to become another Avni and instigate Neel to get inclined towards someone else.
Next day I was ready with my egoistic guard down. I didn’t see Neel though. Avni was there but I wanted to apologize to Neel first. The assembly happened on time after which I reached the classroom. Everyone was laughing at me. I turned to look at the blackboard where it was written: ‘Titiksha has a fucked cunt!’ Alongside it was the same vulgar sketch which I had seen last day in the girls’ toilet. Even before I could react, our class teacher was in the room. Everyone quietened. The next thing the class teacher noticed was the blackboard.
It was then that Neel came in. He was late that day.
It didn’t take much time for Neel to understand what was going on. The class teacher shot the obvious to me, ‘Titiksha, what’s all this nonsense?
‘I don’t know teacher. Someone is spreading rumours about me.’
‘Who?’
‘Neel!’ Someone spoke up from behind. We turned around but didn’t know who it was. ‘Who was that? Come on stand up.’ Nisha did; the same bitch who had once informed Avni about the shirt-swapping incident on my first day in school. I don’t know what her problem was.
‘What did you just say Nisha?’
‘Neel told everyone about this.’
Neel shot a furious glance at Nisha, then a furtive glance towards me, and in the end he faced the teacher who was standing with a give-me-the-truth look on her face.
‘Neel, did you spread this vulgar rumour about Titiksha?’
Neel stood still. I knew what he was going through. He was in a quandary. If he spoke the truth, the rumour would remain a rumour, alright, but the question would then be who spread it. Obviously it would easily be proven it was him who confessed to Avni’s boyfriend. And if Neel agreed to the statement on the blackboard being a reality—that I indeed had a fucked cunt—it would put both Neel and me under strict disciplinary action. Before he could say anything, I spoke up.
‘Teacher, I think Avni has done it.’
‘Avni?’
‘Avni Jain, XI Commerce.’
‘Why would she do all this? Call her.’
I stood my ground while the monitor of our class went out to fetch Avni from her class. A few seconds later, Avni entered our classroom.
‘What’s all this?’ the class teacher asked her gesturing towards the blackboard.
‘It seems like someone by the name of Titiksha has lost her virginity teacher,’ Avni said in her typical I-am-a-smart-ass manner. Most of the class burst out laughing. Only Neel and I didn’t.
‘Shut up!’ the teacher said to the class and confronted Avni.
‘Titiksha claims you have written this.’
Avni shot a surprised look at me and said, ‘Why would I do that Titiksha? How would I know this fact anyway?’
There was further hush-hush laughter.
‘Don’t give me that shit,’ I started but was cut short by my class teacher.
‘What kind of language is that?’
‘I’m sorry teacher, but Avni is jealous of Neel and me.’ I was speaking the truth.
‘Jealous?’
‘Neel and Titiksha are having an affair,’ Nisha butted in from behind. Of course she was on her queen-bitch’s side.
‘Do you students come to school to study or waste time on all this? All these nonsensical Hindi movies are eating your head out it seems.’
I glanced back at the class. Almost the entire class had a we-accept-the-truth expression hanging on their faces. The teacher sat down on her chair, opened her bottle of water, and drank some of it. Nobody talked in between. I thought it was the right time to squeeze in my request.
‘May I please rub the blackboard now teacher?’
The teacher looked at Avni, at Neel, and then at me.
‘No!’
My heart skipped a beat. She stood up.
‘Monitor, rub the board first and look after the class.’ She said and glanced at Neel and me. She said conclusively, ‘You three follow me’ and walked out. I didn’t look at Avni but I looked at Neel who was looking at Avni. I didn’t know why he wasn’t looking at me. He seemed scared of something. Even I was. But one glance from him would have given
me strength. Didn’t he know that?
‘Neel…’
He didn’t listen and followed the teacher urgently. It was only when he was gone that I realized I was trembling with fear for I knew where exactly our class teacher must have gone. Avni came to me and whispered, ‘Whore, I told not to screw my boyfriend the first day you were here. Now you will rot in hell!’ She walked out too. As I stood there unable to move fearing the worst, the class started booing, displaying their middle fingers at me. I left hastily and stopped outside the Principal’s office. The class teacher, Neel, and Avni were already inside the Principal’s room. I stood outside gaping at the name plate: Dr Geetika Kumari Iyer. My heartbeats slowly ascended. I was too numb to think anything worthwhile. Avni came out and told me that the Principal was waiting for me to join the rest of them inside. I followed her inside.
Dr Iyer looked like she was in a bad mood.
‘I thought you were a good girl Titiksha. What happened to you?’ Dr Iyer spoke to me directly. I didn’t know my gait from the classroom to the principal’s office was so slow that everything had been relayed to her by then.
‘It’s not true ma’am,’ I barely managed to speak in my defense, pronouncing every word with caution.
‘Then what’s the truth; tell me,’ she said removing her glasses. She looked menacing without them. ‘I’m all ears.’
‘It’s a joke.’
‘It’s not a joke ma’am. Neel told me about it.’
It was a rumour alright but Neel was not supposed to tell Avni about it. Never! He was supposed to tell her boyfriend only. But why was I believing Avni’s statement? She could very well be lying to create misunderstandings between us.
‘Neel didn’t do anything like that,’ I said.
‘Titiksha please don’t talk out of turn,’ Dr Iyer said to me and to Neel she said, ‘Did you tell Avni what was written on the blackboard?’
Neel remained quiet. He should have said no straightaway. But he didn’t. Then I realized that maybe he did tell this to Avni. Maybe, I realized to my horror, Avni was right.
EX Page 19
