‘What should we do?’ she asks.
‘Let’s wait for Shrey to come,’ I say and try the number again. I am hoping against hope that someone picks up. I pace around the room in anxiety, and Avantika sits nervously on the couch. Her legs are shaking and her hands have gone cold.
The bell rings.
‘I will get that,’ I say and open the door. It’s Shrey. And Tiya.
‘What the fuck is going on?’ Shrey comes in with Tiya and stares at us.
Avantika hands over the envelope to them, ‘This reached us just a while ago.’
They take the crumpled piece of paper out from the envelope and start reading it. They read it and momentarily look at us with horror in their eyes. They read it again.
‘Who sent this?’ Shrey asks, shocked. Tiya’s eyes are still stuck on the envelope.
‘The handwriting on the envelope is his,’ I say.
We all sit down. We have nothing to say. Tiya is still reading it over and over again. She is teary-eyed.
‘Deb and I should go and check it out?’ Shrey says.
‘Mumbai?’ Tiya asks.
‘This is so fucked up,’ Shrey says. ‘What will change even if we go there?’
‘Maybe he is not dead,’ Tiya says, with forced optimism in her voice.
‘Maybe,’ Avantika adds. ‘I never imagined that he would do such a thing.’
‘No, you did. We all did. Didn’t you look at his face that day? Maybe Nivedita was the only reason for which he was still living?’ Shrey argues.
It looks like a curse. Ragini. Nivedita. Ritam. All dead. We are speechless and distraught. I had never seen life being so unfair to someone. It’s horrible. I understand Ritam’s pain. It must have been unbearable. But killing himself? It’s easy to say it’s unjustified, but it’s hard to understand how difficult it must be for that person.
Ritam had become much more than the dead guy from the diary. At least to me, he had grown to be a very good friend. I didn’t talk to him every day, but I have been writing his story for months now. I literally spend hours with him every day. I might not have been close to him, but he was close to me. I had started living his life, seeing things like he did, reading and rereading his diary over and over again; I had started to even think like him.
I don’t know how the others feel about Ritam’s death, but his loss is an irreparable blow to me. Even as Avantika and Tiya talk in whispers that he might be dead and the police or whoever found the envelope must have couriered it, I still don’t believe that he’s dead. For me, Ritam’s had one of the strongest hearts I have ever seen. Yes, death changes a lot, but I had just not foreseen this. I am angrier than I am sad. How can he do this to himself? Our lives were connected with his. Couldn’t he have lived for all the lives he touched every day? Was it that difficult for him? At certain levels, we are responsible too … especially me. I could have saved him. I should have saved him. Why didn’t I fully understand what he was going through? As I sit in denial staring at everyone’s face, my phone rings repeatedly. I ignore the call.
The phone rings again. It’s an unknown number. I reject the call. The phone rings again. I reject it again. And again.
‘You should take that!’ Shrey says, irritated at my ringtone.
‘Fine,’ I say.
I wait for the phone to ring again. It rings again and I pick it up.
‘Hi Deb,’ the voice says. It’s a familiar voice. What? No! Is it? Fuck!
‘Umm … huh? Who’s this?’
‘Ritam. You forgot me?’
‘Ohh. NO. Are you crazy? No. Hi … Ritam …’
I cover the phone with my hand and shout to the others, ‘IT’S RITAM!’
I put the phone on loudspeaker and we all huddle up near it.
‘Yes, I am Ritam. I know why you’re surprised. But don’t worry, I am Ritam. I am in Delhi,’ he says.
‘Delhi? We received your note by courier. What was that …?’ I ask him.
It’s a strange feeling to know that he’s alive. One part of me feels highly relieved. The other part is angry and wants to fucking punch him through the phone. Though most of all, I am intrigued. What’s wrong with this diary? First he sends us across the country to find his girlfriend? And now this?
‘It’s a long story,’ he says.
After reading what he had been through in the note we just read, he sounds surprisingly cheerful.
‘What does that mean? You fucking killed us here! Why are you in Delhi?’ I ask. ‘How long are you here?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t plan on going back to Mumbai,’ he says.
‘As in? Got transferred?’ I ask.
‘I am at Ragini’s place,’ he says.
All of us look at each other, bewildered.
‘Ragini’s place?’
‘Yes …’
I don’t know how to react. A part of me tells me he has gone crazy. He was on medication as that note said. I think he is losing it.
‘Ragini … she’s alive,’ Ritam says.
‘What? Now I’m sure of it. I start to feel sorry for him. He has lost it. has lost it.
‘Yes, she’s alive! You should meet her. She really wants to meet you. All of you,’ he says.
‘Ritam … you’re joking, right?’ I ask.
He’s going crazy, we all think. I don’t say anything. We look at each other and are speechless at Ritam’s nonsense.
‘I am serious, Deb. I will text you the address,’ he says. ‘Please come. I need to go now. I am leaving Delhi tonight for a few days. Please be here soon. And please get Avantika, Shrey and Tiya too.’
‘Ritam …?’
‘I really have to go. I will text you the address,’ he says and before I can say anything, he disconnects the call.
We wait for the text. We have no clue what’s going on. Supposedly, he was dead. Suddenly, not only is he alive, but he says Ragini is alive too? Something is grossly wrong. And my guess is that it’s his head.
‘He has lost his mind,’ Shrey says.
‘I guess,’ I say.
The phone buzzes. It’s an East Delhi address, a two-hour drive from my place in peak traffic.
Are you guys coming too?’ Shrey looks at Avantika and Tiya.
‘Obviously,’ they echo.
We get into Shrey’s car and he drives as fast as he can, but the traffic slows him down. I am still not sure what’s going on, so I call on the number Ritam called me from. He picks up, talks normally and asks us to reach as soon as possible. He sounds normal … and it’s strange. The pieces don’t fit at all. I want to ask him if Ragini is really alive but I don’t. I am totally confused. We tell each other that everything is going to be just fine, though we are really scared.
No one is talking in the car, but Avantika notices the distance between Tiya and Shrey.
‘This car brings some strange memories back, doesn’t it?’ Avantika says. We all nod. ‘Is there something wrong between the two of you?’
‘Who? Us? Tiya asks. ‘No! Nothing.’
‘They haven’t been talking for the last three months. Shrey has been calling her but she doesn’t pick up his calls. So, Shrey thinks why bother? He doesn’t call her at all now,’ I blurt out.
‘Thank you,’ Shrey says.
‘Why don’t you pick up his calls?’ Avantika asks Tiya.
‘We have nothing to talk about,’ Tiya says.
‘He doesn’t call you to talk to you, Tiya. Shrey calls you to tell you that you’re the only thing he ever thinks about. He has wanted to tell you that for the last three months. He has not been able to concentrate on anything because you’re not there in his life and he misses you like crazy. Basically, he loves you and he can’t do without you,’ I say.
‘Deb!’ Shrey says, shocked.
‘I warned you. Either you tell her or I will.’
‘B … but Shrey never said that to me …’ Tiya says, her voice faltering.
‘Because she never gave me a chance,’ Shrey says.
‘You guys can talk to each other, right?’ Avantika says.
‘I thought you didn’t want to be with me?’ Shrey says.
‘Why would I not? I love you. I always have.’
‘I love you too, Tiya. But why did you say that we shouldn’t be together?’
‘You weren’t serious about me. Any time I said something like I love you, you never noticed it. You would just shrug and talk about something else. I thought I was one of those many girls that Deb told me whom you date and forget. I didn’t want to be one of them.’
‘You were special. You are special,’ Shrey says.
And I have to tell you that this is a day of shocks. As if Ritam and Ragini supposedly being alive wasn’t enough, Shrey has tears in his eyes. For a girl. So does Tiya. They tell each other how much they love each other and how painful the last three months have been. It never ceases to amaze me how easy it is to destroy your chance at true love, and how getting it to last forever is even easier. People just don’t see it.
Avantika holds my hand and says, ‘You’re the best thing.’
I smile at her and say, ‘I love you.’
With that out of the way, and an hour still to go to reach the place where Ritam has asked us to come, the mystery just keeps building up. No one has anything to say. Finally, we reach the address.
‘Seems like this is it?’ I say.
We get down from the car outside a one-storey house, decent-looking and well maintained. Tiya rings the bell and we wait. Shrey and Tiya are holding hands.
‘This is so screwed up,’ Shrey says.
I am kind of scared about what we will have to see now. A little later, we see a door opening. Ritam! We see him walking towards us. He looks good. And really not dead. He is smiling as he walks up to us. We are almost shocked to see him all right. It even scares me a little. Has he gone completely mad? Is that why he is smiling so much? The note said he was a living corpse. But he looks better than how he had looked when we had met in Mumbai. Somehow, seeing him in person feels like someone just lifted a boulder off my chest. He doesn’t look crazy. He looks just fine … Normal.
‘Hey!’ he says and smiles at us.
‘Hey, long time,’ I say. I can’t believe we’re making small talk.
‘Yeah, how’s the book going?’ he asks.
‘Good,’ I say.
‘Ritam, are you okay?’ Avantika asks.
‘Never better,’ he says and flashes a charming smile. ‘Why don’t you guys come in?’
We nod and he makes us sit in the drawing room. It’s a well-decorated house with pink curtains, blue sofas, aromatic candles, and is lined with photo frames and flower vases. Just like I had imagined …
‘Coffee?’ he asks.
We shake our heads but he orders the maid to get coffee for all of us.
‘Then what the fuck was the note all about?’ Tiya asks, exasperated.
He starts to grin a little.
‘You better stop fucking around, Ritam. You had us scared,’ Avantika says.
‘I am sorry for that.’
‘We are still waiting for an explanation,’ Shrey says.
‘Okay When Nivedita passed away, I did try to kill myself. So what you read in the note did happen,’ he says. His eyes look sad when he takes his sister’s name. But there is a kind of happiness on his face too.
‘You did? So the note is real?’ Avantika asks.
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I took the first injection.’
‘And?’
‘I passed out before I could take the second,’ he says, embarrassed and relieved at the same time.
‘Then?’ we echo.
‘So, I didn’t die. I woke up many hours later, coughing and bleeding. It was horrible. A few neighbours got me admitted in a nearby hospital. I was there for a week before I was discharged,’ he says.
I am glad he is alive, though somewhere I had wished that the Nivedita part was a lie too, but it is not.
‘Then why did you send me the note?’ I ask.
‘Since you were writing about me, I thought I should send you that. I didn’t want to scare you guys. I called you up to say that I had couriered something and explain what had happened. I called you a few times and couldn’t reach you. So I thought, since I was anyway coming to Delhi, I would personally tell you guys. There was already so much on my mind,’ he says.
‘Don’t ever do that again!’ Avantika says. ‘It was stupid.’
‘I know.’
And Ragini? She is dead, right?’ Tiya asks. She is growing impatient by the minute.
‘She is not,’ he says and smiles.
‘She is not?’ Avantika asks.
Ritam shakes his head. ‘When I woke up in the hospital bed and the doctors told me that I was very lucky to be alive, I started thinking. Maybe there was someone who wanted me to live. Maybe it was Nivedita. May be Ragini. They wanted me to live a fulfilling life which they couldn’t. Or that’s what I thought. Anyway, from that moment on, I banished all thoughts of killing myself. I resolved that I would sort out my issues and emerge stronger. I was sure Nivedita and Ragini both would have wanted me to live.’
‘And us,’ Tiya says and smiles. He smiles back. ‘How could you fucking forget us?’
‘And yes, you guys. So, I called up Ragini’s home in London. The people I had called when you were in Mumbai? The ones who told me that her parents had to go back to India because of the death of their daughter?’
‘Yes, I remember.’ Shrey says and we nod.
‘I took Ragini’s parents’ number from them. It took me three days to muster up the courage to call them. But when I did, I was in for a shock,’ he says with a smile.
‘What? Ragini is alive!’ Avantika exclaims.
‘Exactly,’ he says and smiles at us. ‘She is sleeping in the other room right now or I would have introduced you guys to her. But later maybe.’
‘You’re not kidding, right?’ Avantika asks.
‘No! Why would I?’ he says.
Needless to say, I am stunned. I am too confused and too happy to say anything.
‘Umm … if you don’t mind … can we see her?’ Avantika says. Yes, a part of us still says that Ritam has gone crazy.
‘Sure,’ he says, ‘Come with me.’
We all get up. My heart starts to pump furiously. Whatever has happened since day one flashes before my eyes. It’s so strange. Ragini is not dead? I walk right beside Ritam and he takes us to the adjacent room. I am sweating and I feel I’ll pass out from the anticipation. He creaks open the door. My eyes dart around the room to spot Ragini. The girl from the diary. The girl we searched for across the country. The girl we thought was alive when she was dead. And alive when we thought she was dead.
We finally see her. There is she, lying on the bed. I have seen her pictures by now. Ritam had sent me some a month back, but she looks nothing like that. She is barely recognizable. Her skin is not the pale colour that I saw in the pictures. Her hands are not smooth like a small kid’s. Her hair is not the black cascading waves that Ritam had described them to be and I had seen in the pictures. I wonder if it’s even her. I look at her intently as we go close to her. Yes, it is her. Her eyes are exactly like what I had seen. It is Ragini, in front of us, finally.
Ragini is in a single, long, white robe that covers most of her. The skin on her body is a strange tinge of pink and black. It’s the same, on her hands, her face, her toes, everywhere. Her hair, where there is any left, is a crumpled mess, but she has lost most of it. She is making some sounds like she is in pain. I am aghast. Avantika, who has been holding my hand, clutches it tighter and her nails dig in. I look at Shrey and Tiya and they have the same expression on their faces. Of terr
or and bewilderment. Just looking at her is so painful.
Ragini is burnt beyond recognition.
It looks like the blast and the fire had totally consumed her body. She isn’t missing any of her limbs, but her skin is totally charred. It’s terrifying. Ritam goes and sits on the bed and asks us to sit. He looks lovingly at her, holds her hand and kisses her forehead. She purrs between the moans of pain.
The expression on his face—when he looks at her and says, ‘Isn’t she beautiful?’—is unbelievable. Had it not been for Ritam, the question would have been a cruel joke. But we know that he means it and he says it because he still sees her like that. She is still the most beautiful thing to him.
‘Is she in pain?’ Avantika asks Ritam softly.
Ragini slowly opens her eyes and looks at us.
‘I am,’ she says and smiles at us. Her voice is a little throaty. ‘But I’m getting better.’
I guess that’s from the blast too. I feel so sorry for her. She looks very bad. With the kind of burns on her body, I think she is really lucky to be alive.
‘We have heard so much about you,’ Avantika says and smiles.
‘I have heard about you too,’ she says. Her voice gives way a few times. She can barely talk. ‘Had you not tried to find me, I would never have gotten him back. Thank you.’
‘It’s the least we could do,’ I say.
‘You should rest,’ Ritam says and looks at Ragini. She smiles at him and closes her eyes.
‘We’ll wait outside,’ Avantika says and we leave the room.
The door is still ajar and we look inside the room. Ritam whispers something in her ears and Ragini smiles, almost laughs a little. He hugs her and it seems like they would never leave each other. It looks like they attempt to say ‘bye’ a million times before Ritam can finally leave her side. He kisses her hand about a zillion times before he lets it go.
‘Sorry,’ he says as he comes out of the room. He is smiling his widest.
We go back to the living room and take our places on the sofa.
‘Isn’t she perfect?’ he asks and smiles. ‘Can you believe that she says she loves me? It’s amazing.’ He adds, ‘She might not be beautiful to you, I understand that, but she is still very pretty to me. She will always be.’
If It’s Not Forever: It’s Not Love Page 20
