The Girl of My Dreams

by Durjoy Datta

  He snapped out of his reverie. He was staring at the cracked glass walls of Jayanti’s cabin.

  Jayanti sat smiling in her chair, waiting for Daman to speak.

  ‘Why does this room smell like shit?’ asked Daman.

  ‘Can we come to the point? You—’ answered Jayanti.

  ‘You said everyone will love this new Shreyasi. They fucking hate her,’ grumbled Daman.

  ‘You have no idea what you’re talking about, Daman. Stop pacing around first and sit down.

  You’re freaking me out,’ said Jayanti leaning forward in her chair, hands crossed over the proofs of the book that was due for printing. Three cups of black coffee lay empty on her table. Hundreds of paperback and hardback books lay stacked in teetering towers around her table. Millions of words by authors known and unknown were scattered all around her. Jayanti looked at Avni. ‘Ask him to calm down a little, will you?’

  Avni tugged at Daman’s arm. Daman sat down. He spoke, ‘Are you kidding me, Jayanti? People don’t like my book. Go, check the reviews online. They hate the Shreyasi in the book, the Shreyasi you created, the Shreyasi you wrote out. She’s just someone whom the protagonist loves and fucks.

  She needed to be more than that. And I’m goddam tired of answering the question if the main guy in the book is me. I told you we should have given the guy a different name than mine.’

  ‘We are NOT having this conversation again. Because we used your name, people think it’s a true story and readers lap up true stories like anything. You should know that, right? Even movies do that all the time. Do you really think those movies are based on true events? Bullshit!’

  Daman had feebly protested about the edits and rewrites till the day before the book went into print but there was no winning against the cunning of Jayanti who predicted doomsday for the book if they didn’t do that.

  ‘I will just read the reviews out. Wait,’ said Jayanti Raghunath, searching the Internet for reviews of The Girl of My Dreams. ‘Here.’ She read them out. ‘“The book is a classic romance.”

  “Loved the ending.” “In love with Shreyasi” “I cried so much in the book. Heart emoji. Crying emoji. Heart emoji.” “I totally heart emoji heart emoji the story.” What are you talking about? Most of the reviews are good.’ She turned her MacBook around.

  Daman rolled his eyes.

  Avni pulled the laptop close and perused the reviews. They were overwhelmingly positive. But these weren’t the only reviews online. For the past few days, Daman had been mailing Avni every bad/average review of the book. Especially those where Shreyasi had been called a spineless,

  stereotypical, weak damsel in distress, and the ones where Daman had been called a failure of a writer, his story old wine in a new well-marketed bottle. The most scathing reviews were from people who had read Daman’s short pieces of fiction on Facebook before he had signed the deal and had come to fall in love with the old Shreyasi. They called him a ‘sell-out’. He blamed it all on Jayanti’s overbearing editing. If only Daman had known that behind that beautifully elongated body, those kind, tired eyes of Jayanti, there was a manipulative, control-freak shrew . . . Avni had borne most of the brunt of Daman’s anger, being the only one who could keep him from self- destruction.

  Jayanti continued, ‘Look, Daman I don’t know what kind of acceptance you’re looking for but selling 15,000 copies of a debut book in the first three weeks constitutes a resounding success. You need to stop thinking what a few people think about your lead girl character. Look at the bigger picture. The book is a hit! It’s even on the Bharatstan Times Bestseller list.’

  ‘Why don’t you tape it to your head and strut around then?’ snapped Daman.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re complaining about, Daman. Other debut authors would kill to be in your position right now.’

  ‘She has a point,’ said Avni.

  Daman threw Avni a murderous look. He said, ‘Should I clap for you, Jayanti?’ He mocked her.

  ‘People out there are calling me another Karthik Iyer, the lowest fucking denominator.’

  ‘Listen, Daman. You were writing notes on Facebook when I spotted you and gave you this book deal. Dare you make it sound like I wrecked your career! I gave you a career if you look at it closely.’

  ‘You spotted me, remember? You came to me. You offered me a book deal because you thought the book would work. It wasn’t charity. You knew I had an audience online that would buy the book. You knew my book had potential.’

  Jayanti laughed throatily. ‘Audience? Online? Like really? Followers on Twitter and Facebook don’t mean anything, Daman. It doesn’t cost money to like or share something. It takes a good relatable book, a marketing plan, a smart editor, a smart publicist to sell a book. People share videos of poor people dying all day with sad smileys and complain about how wretched the world is but won’t part with a rupee for them. How would you have made them spend on you?’

  ‘They already did. Data isn’t free, Jayanti.’

  ‘Haha. Big joke, Daman. You’re so funny. Why don’t you put that in your next book, haan?’

  Avni looked at the two of them volleying verbal insults like a spectator at a tennis match. Avni had been in this cabin once before. It was the day Daman had signed the contract for his book which was supposed to change his life. That day she had noticed the massive cloth board behind

  Jayanti Raghunath’s heavily cushioned chair. It had been covered with jackets of all the bestsellers

  Jayanti had edited in her decade-long career. Some thirty-odd books in ten years. The probability of success had made Avni nauseated. What if Daman’s book doesn’t go up there? But today the board was covered completely with a white chart paper. ‘I’m getting something done here,’ Jayanti had offered as an explanation. It wasn’t the only thing that had changed in the cabin. The desk looked new. Even the printer and the laptop and carpet looked largely unused. The glass wall was cracked and splintered. And the room smelt strange. Like it was heavily perfumed to cover up a rotting corpse.

  Avni stole glances at her watch as they continued to argue. Her meeting at Avalon Consulting would start in another half an hour. If she were to get stuck in traffic there was no way she would make it on time.

  ‘Daman?’ she said. ‘I want to stay but I have to get to work.’ She wanted to say, ‘For your and for my sake. Look around you, Daman. So many authors. And only a few names have made it to that board of hers. The money from your advance is already running out. If only you hadn’t bought the car . . . if only you hadn’t left your job . . . I have to work so you can write.’

  Jayanti and Daman both looked at her. She pointed at her watch. Daman nodded knowingly. Avni got up and hugged him. She whispered in his ear, ‘Stay calm,’ and took his leave.

  Jayanti said after Avni left, ‘You are good writer, no doubt about it, but you still have a lot to learn. Do you know why you finally agreed to all my changes, Daman? It was because you were scared. You were scared the book wouldn’t work. That’s why you fought with me, but didn’t fight enough, that’s why you dissented, but not enough. Because in those moments of doubt you trusted your editor who has been in this industry for far longer than you have.’

  ‘Yes, it was wrong to trust you. You fleeced me. I left my job and moved out of my parent’s house because of your deal. And what did you offer me? A shitty royalty percentage and an editor like you?’

  ‘No one forced you to sign the deal. You could have fought harder for Shreyasi. But you didn’t.

  And you got enough money and a bestselling book if I may add. Maybe you wouldn’t be so angry if you hadn’t spent all the money buying that car of yours.’

  ‘Oh, so now you’re my financial advisor? What next? You will dictate what I should eat?’ ridiculed Daman.

  ‘Enough, Daman. I don’t take nonsense from my authors, especially first-time authors, and you would be off my roster if you weren’t talented—’

  Daman ignored her aggressive tone and interrupted he
r. ‘Whatever, Jayanti. The fact of the matter is that there will be a book with my name on it with a character that’s as shitty as Shreyasi.

  Nothing you say will ever change that.’

  Jayanti shrugged. ‘You know what won’t change? That you can be a writer. That you can sell books for a long time if you let me tweak a few things. You won’t have to go back to your engineering job any more. And that would mean a lot to a whole lot of people,’ said Jayanti. ‘You know how many authors in India can claim to earn a living out of just writing? A handful! Karthik

  Iyer, Anuj Bhagat, Karan Talwar, Gurpreet Kaur . . . and I can put you in that league. If you can’t be grateful I think you’re being short-sighted. Listen I have been doing this a long time. Fixing books, that’s what I do and I do it well.’

  Just then, the door was knocked on by the office boy and Jayanti was summoned for a meeting.

  She looked at Daman and spoke, ‘I need to go now. When you go back home, think about what this book can do for you. Also when you realize I am talking for your own good, start writing your second book and we can proceed with signing the deal for it.’

  Daman scoffed. ‘No way.’

  ‘We all need to earn, Daman. I know you have burnt through the advance money from the first book.’

  ‘You did this to me—’

  ‘Let me finish. You’re refusing to do any book launches for The Girl of My Dreams. How long do you think the book can sustain without any publicity? So think rationally and stop acting like a brat. Do a couple of book launches for this book and then start work on the next one. We make a great team, Daman. Never forget that. We are all working for you. You stand to gain the most out of it.’

  ‘. . .’

  ‘I like you, Daman. You have passion and I like that but you need to take things easy. I got to go now,’ she said and got up. ‘I will wait for your decision.’ She stretched out her hand to shake his.

  Without another word Daman strode out of the room, leaving Jayanti’s hand hanging mid-air.

  Jayanti watched him go. The reason why she liked Daman was also the one why she hated him. He was passionate, almost a little mad, teetering on the edge of insanity, and she could see that in his neurotic and chaotic writing. Of course, it was her responsibility to tone down the madness of his book. She remembered Daman’s raging eyes the day she gave him the author copies of The Girl of

  My Dreams. She was terrified for a second; it felt like he would smash the wine bottle against her face. Thankfully he hadn’t and the evening had run smoothly.

  It was only that coy little girlfriend of his who could keep him grounded. Jayanti hoped she would knock some sense into him.

  She looked around and sighed. Someone had broken into her cabin a week ago. Her desk, her laptop, the printer were amongst the many things the intruder had vandalized and spray-painted on.

  The intruder had even tried to throw her chair through the glass wall. She had to get it changed. But the most disgusting thing had been the smell. The floor was smeared with human faeces and water from the sprinklers. They had to shut the entire office down for two days because of the debilitating stench. Despite the perfume, Jayanti could still feel the ungodly smell lurking.

  Whoever had broken in hadn’t even spared the books. A few of them were burnt, and amongst them were Jayanti’s copies of The Girl of My Dreams. Luckily, the water sprinklers had taken care of the fire before it could spread. The CCTV cameras at the Bookhound office had long been defunct so they didn’t record who did it or how it happened. A couple of years back, a crazed fan had broken in and stolen a few advance copies of Karthik Iyer’s book. Screwball fans had always been a part of this industry, but even Jayanti admitted that this was the farthest anyone had gone.

  She picked up her laptop and closed the pages with the reviews. As she turned to leave, her eyes fell on the bare white chart paper she had covered the cloth board with. Behind the chart paper was the most telling review of Daman’s book, spray-painted in bold red letters over the jackets of the bestselling books Jayanti had edited over the years.

  LEAVE DAMAN ALONE, YOU STUPID WHORE. EAT SHIT.

  6

  Daman was early to reach Summerhouse Café. A tall glass of cold coffee sweated on his table, untouched. He had successfully resisted the temptation to order a beer. It wouldn’t be the first time if he were to have one drink too many and run amok at this pub. He smiled thinking of the time he had sneaked behind the bartender, filched a new bottle of Jack Daniels, and replaced it with his urine-filled beer bottle. This had taken place only three years ago but now it seemed like another lifetime.

  ‘Oh, the celebrity is already here!’

  ‘Screw you, Bhaiya,’ said Daman stepping down from his high stool. He gave Sumit a one- handed hug.

  ‘You seem to be in a foul mood,’ said Sumit and ordered two beers. He noticed the glass of cold coffee and cancelled Daman’s. ‘Wise choice,’ he said. ‘Remind me to go easy as well. I have a date later tonight.’

  ‘You?’ joked Daman placing his gaze on Sumit’s paunch.

  ‘Tinder date. I got a match as I climbed up the damn stairs,’ said Sumit. Sumit always complained about the stairs of Summerhouse Café. They were tall and misshapen and a horror to climb down when drunk. ‘She’s coming here.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘I told her I would be at Summerhouse and she told me it’s exactly where she and her friends are hanging out tonight. This has to be my quickest conversion from a conversation to a date. I think my game is getting better.’

  ‘Show me her picture,’ asked Daman, still incredulous.

  Sumit fished out his phone and showed him the photograph. Daman smirked. ‘That’s just a pair of lips.’

  ‘The sexiest lips in the universe you mean. Just look at them,’ said Sumit, turning the close-up picture of the girl’s blood-red lips towards him again.

  ‘Best of luck,’ said Daman. ‘I hope she’s a not a guy. Or a serial killer.’

  ‘We should meet more often. You might be my lucky charm,’ said Sumit poking Daman’s shoulder.

  Daman sniggered. Although Sumit was Daman’s senior in college, Sumit and he had struck up an unlikely friendship which had strengthened over the last six years. Unlike Daman, Sumit hadn’t dreamt up a fantasy for a career and put his fate in the hands of a wench like Jayanti. He had been biding his time at Alstom Engineering. Sooner or later he would immigrate to the Middle East, get a resident visa, buy a Japanese-made SUV and never look back. Sumit awkwardly climbed up on the high stool.

  ‘So? Did you read it? What did you think?’ asked Daman.

  Sumit took a long, big gulp of his beer. ‘I am with Jayanti Raghunath on this. I never thought I would like anything you wrote. She did a good job of making the book readable.’

  ‘You can’t be serious. Did you really like the Shreyasi she wrote? C’mon!’ spat Daman.

  ‘I did. She was way better than the strange Shreyasi you wrote about in those Facebook posts.’

  ‘She wasn’t strange,’ protested Daman.

  ‘No, she wasn’t strange. Strange doesn’t even cut it. In one of your stories on Facebook, she burns the guy’s phone just to prove a point. In another, she shears off her hair in protest against the guy’s behaviour. Who the fuck does that? That’s not strange, that’s complete madness!’

  ‘That’s love. Well, not the usual garden-variety love, but still. Moreover, she had reasons to do those things in the incidents preceding her actions. She was doing everything to protect her relationship. I would have done the same thing,’ he argued.

  ‘You’re twisted, Daman.’ Sumit laughed. Then he continued, irritably, ‘Whatever, man. The new

  Shreyasi’s believable and she’s nice. Jayanti knows what she’s doing. But I wish she’d made you change the name as well. Shreyasi isn’t even a nice name.’

  Daman rolled his eyes. ‘Bhaiya, you’re still stuck there?’

  ‘Yeah, right! You’re the one who never tires of writing
posts using her name and now you have written a book using that name and it’s me who’s stuck there. Brilliant. Just fucking brilliant,’ snapped Sumit.

  ‘It’s just a name I use. You know that.’

  ‘Hmmm. Are you still getting those nightmares?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Does she still die in those nightmares?’

  ‘More or less. Sometimes she doesn’t.’

  ‘Do you remember anything else?’

  ‘No, nothing. It’s just those few seconds before the drive, different versions of the same dream,’ said Daman.

  ‘You’re taking the pills?’

  Daman nodded. Sumit sighed and said, ‘The next time you think of her name, just remember the girl who holds that name nearly drove you to your death.’

  ‘You’re never going to forget that, are you?’

  ‘Of course I am never going to forget that. It was us who suffered for six months in that hospital.

  Not that girl. She ran after the accident. I hate her and I hate her name. I would have really liked it if you hadn’t used that bitch’s name. You could have used Avni’s name instead,’ said Sumit.

  Sumit along with Daman’s father had spent months running from one doctor to another to take second opinions and then third. Later, once he had woken up, they had driven him to physiotherapy and psychotherapy sessions. The coma had wiped out certain memories but Daman had responded rather favourably to both therapies. When he had first regained consciousness, he had even forgotten how to walk or use the toilet or to hold a pen.

  ‘The girl in the car has nothing to do with the girl in the book. I don’t even know what she was like. It’s just a name I picked for a character.’

  ‘Just a name? Then why does the Shreyasi in the book look exactly like the Shreyasi from the car wreck? The pale face? Long black hair?’