Forever Is True

by Novoneel Chakraborty

  Initially, it seemed as if Aditri wasn’t easy to impress. I would give her that obvious kind of attention in school, and later on in the coaching class as well, that a boy would give when he was in love. But she didn’t seem to understand anything. Meanwhile, I started receiving paper chits in school with adjectives written on them like cute, handsome, irresistible, and what not. They kept me awake more than trigonometry and chemistry (the subjects I hated the most). And with every passing day, the number of chits kept increasing. I tried my best to catch the person behind them but couldn’t. It was only when I decided to complain about it to the principal that I ran into Aditri right outside the headmistress’ office. She asked me where I was going. I told her someone was constantly giving me chits and I didn’t know what to do about it.

  ‘And someone is constantly trying to impress me. I too don’t know what to do about it.’ Those were her exact words, I remember. An awkward silence fell between us. Then I knew why I shouldn’t complain to the principal. It was Aditri who had been sending me those chits. She liked me as much as I liked her. But she was an introvert unlike me and thus got a kick out of seeing me getting all worked up after reading those chits.

  I really won’t ever be able to tell or write about what I felt in those days that followed with Aditri and me getting into a relationship. It was a first for both of us. There were so many times I felt that everything was unreal. I hugged her only to convince myself that I wasn’t simply daydreaming. I introduced her to my best friend, to my family (not as a girlfriend but as a close friend). On weekdays, we would be together in school while during weekends, we were either at her or my place studying together. Our academic performance also got better unlike my other friends, who fared badly because they were in ‘love’.

  The best part about those days was that I wasn’t emotionally corrupt. I strongly believed that my search for my soulmate had come to an end with Aditri. Her birthday was a month before mine. I remember sneaking out of my house an hour before midnight with my music system on my ranger cycle. I pedalled to her house and played the birthday song exactly at midnight. The inspiration was obvious: the character of Lloyd played by John Cusack from the movie Say Anything. It was my favourite movie at that time. Before her parents or the guard of her building could catch me, I sped away on the bicycle. The music system was left behind to keep playing the birthday song. Only Aditri knew it was mine. And that was what I cared about the most. The next day she thanked me by kissing me on my lips. She pressed her lips against mine for a microsecond but I felt the reverberations for a long, long time. I was waiting for the month to get over. I had planned to thank her on my birthday, her way.

  My parents always had a small party at home on my birthday. It was embarrassing because there had been accidents in my family, twice, on my birthday—my brother’s death and my uncle’s sudden paralysis—and since then I had always felt weird celebrating my birthday. That year, of course, was special. Apart from my birthday, I had something else to look forward to. I had invited Aditri and her parents. She had called me to inform that her parents would come later since her father had some official work. I couldn’t care less.

  Aditri was supposed to come early in the evening. Around 5 p.m. But she didn’t. Not even till 7 p.m. I called her landline many times. But there was no answer. In fact, when her parents arrived at around 8 p.m., I felt the first knot of fear in my stomach. They thought Aditri was already at my place. Her mother had gone to the market and was later picked up by her father. So there was nobody at home to answer my phone calls. Aditri’s father called up the police. A search party was formed and the area from Aditri’s house to mine scoured. Other students of our batch were contacted. Her parents were crying. And so was I. After around three–four hours, Aditri’s body was found under an out-of-order lamp post in a lane next to my house. I wasn’t allowed to see the body. The description which I overheard later had scarred me for a pretty long time. She had died from a traumatic head injury, haemorrhage from a scalp laceration. It was said that her long hair had somehow got entangled in the spokes of the back tyre of her bicycle, which led to her death. It was a freak accident. People tried to question it. I was one of them. But there was no alternative theory that we could come up with. And to this day, nobody knows for sure if it was an unfortunate accident or a . . . planned murder.

  3

  The thought of Aditri’s body made Saveer sit up in bed. He had never seen the body, but had imagined it many a time. And the image had haunted him for as long as he could remember. So many deaths on his birthday. Prima facie, all of them seemed random. But until there was anything to prove otherwise, he would have to rely on coincidence. The tattoo was a clue. But it was a clue to a dead end. It was as if the person behind the deaths was telling Saveer, ‘I wanted you to know my intention but not me.’

  Saveer got out of bed. Sleep was nowhere on the horizon. He felt an urge to call up Prisha. He picked up his phone, scrolled down to her name and was about to tap on it when an impulse made him throw the phone on the bed. I won’t call her, he sounded strict. He repeated the same to himself aloud a few more times to accept her absence.

  There was a beep. He glanced at the mobile. There was another beep. Saveer realized the sound wasn’t coming from the phone on the bed. It was the other phone, which he kept on the side table in the room. It was a new phone with an old number that he had recently reactivated. It was Mean Monster’s number.

  Prisha had been an emotional interlude for him. A much-needed one. An interlude that he had thought would finally bring him to his redemption. That through Prisha he would realize that the fear which he had harboured since childhood—anyone he loved would die, would turn out to be a thought-bubble. But it was not to be. He was happy that Prisha was still alive unlike the others. And he had no business taking another shot at togetherness, doesn’t matter how much he itched to. What Ishanvi’s death had taught him was actually the truth: perhaps he deserved all this. And till the time he didn’t know why he deserved all this he would be better off punishing himself the way he had been till he’d met Prisha.

  Saveer read the message on Tinder. Before Prisha, the Mean Monster only had to text his contacts that he was ‘available’, and requests would pour in. And with every girl, he got fresh pings. After all, what the Mean Monster did, few guys could: give women unprecedented orgasms by pushing them to their innermost sexual edge.

  After staying away from the hook-up scene for nearly a year, he reluctantly downloaded Tinder and made some random swipes to reinitiate his emotional destruction.

  Hi, this is Asmita. I’ve heard a lot about you from a friend months back. Are you really the Mean Monster or an imposter?

  I’m the one. Saveer replied. He was breathing heavily.

  How can I be sure? she asked.

  There’s only one way to know.

  And what’s that?

  Try me.

  Saveer hated himself for writing it. After a long time, he was back to hating himself. Back to the life he never thought he would live again. Especially after meeting Prisha. After falling in an impossible love with her.

  Fair enough. The Sugar Factory @11 tonight?

  Okay. I’ll be next to the bar.

  Like always, Saveer took a corner seat in The Sugar Factory, where his presence would be unassuming. He was trying hard not to think about anything. Thoughts would make him weak, make him crave for Prisha, make him want to meet her, even if it was just once. While Saveer waited for Asmita, there was someone in the pub who was sipping the same drink that Saveer had ordered. The person’s face wasn’t visible. The head was titled upwards and a Fedora covered half of the face. A sly smile played on the person’s lips. The person, after all, was responsible for bringing Saveer back to his masochistic lifestyle. His pain was the person’s pleasure. It was forever thus, the person wondered, chewing on the straw in the glass.

  Saveer noticed Asmita by the bar, looking around. He immediately received a message from her: />
  I’m here. Where are you?

  Saveer gulped down his LIT. He was tipsy enough to go through it. He stood up and approached Asmita.

  ‘I’m here,’ he said. For a moment, she couldn’t take her eyes off of him. He was more than what her friends had told her. And immediately her mind said: would he be more than what her friends had told her in bed as well?

  ‘Should we go where we would be in a few hours or would you like to indulge in some small talk at first?’

  Asmita knew that the Mean Monster was no-bullshit guy. She cleared her throat and said, ‘I want to drink a little.’ Else I wouldn’t be able to handle his sex-on-legs vibe, she thought.

  ‘What are you into?’ he asked.

  ‘Teq shots,’ she said.

  ‘Teq shots for the lady, please,’ Saveer told the bartender. The bartender placed six shots in front of Asmita, who downed them sooner than she usually did.

  ‘Let’s go,’ she said, taking a deep breath.

  Once Saveer and Asmita had left the pub, the person put down the LIT, stood up and went to the women’s washroom. Humming a Hindi movie song, the person admired the long hair in the mirror, took out a lipstick and dabbed some of it on the lips. The person was immersed in the reflection in the mirror when someone said, ‘Excuse me.’ It was a girl.

  ‘Sure, dear,’ the person said. The girl frowned. There was something uncanny about the person. But before she could understand what had caught her attention, the person left the washroom.

  * * *

  It was an awkward drive for Asmita. She talked as much as she could, but Saveer stayed quiet except for occasional monosyllabic utterances. They were heading to her place in Malleswaram. Had he not been so irresistibly sexy and had she not been told so much about him, Asmita would have asked him to stop. She wasn’t into random sexual encounters except for one or two instances when she had been drunk. In this case, she only wanted to experience the Mean Monster.

  They stopped at her place. The ground floor belonged to the landlord. He followed her upstairs. The moment she unlocked the door, Saveer held her tightly from behind. They stumbled a bit and got inside. Saveer kicked the door close. His lips were all over the nape of her neck as his hands grabbed her thighs. Saveer didn’t want to think about anything but he couldn’t win over his mind. The way he had made love to Prisha on the yacht flashed in front his eyes. His grasp on her thighs loosened. He took it as a challenge against his own self and thrust his hand under her dress, reaching for her panty. Asmita was already breathing heavily. She felt her panty being tugged down. Saveer was about to probe her vagina when Prisha’s body, after it was pulled out of the abyss, floated in front of him. Saveer’s hand retreated. Asmita grabbed it and tried to guide it back to her vagina.

  ‘Touch me,’ she said in a rasping voice. Saveer put all his energy into concentrating on the here and now but Asmita could feel the initial passion ebbing. His hands left her. She pulled up her panty and turned around.

  ‘Anything wrong?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that . . . there is this girl . . .’ he stopped. Asmita kept looking at him as he sat down with a thud on a nearby chair.

  ‘Don’t tell me you stopped because you love a girl?’ Asmita said.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Saveer mumbled.

  And I thought all men are dogs, Asmita murmured softly and went inside, adjusting her dress.

  Saveer was blank for a moment. Then he heard his phone beep. It was a message. He took it out from his pocket and checked. It was Prisha. He felt a lump in his throat. The message read: Why?

  Saveer kept staring at the question till the phone’s screen light went out. He wished he had a one-word answer to the message. Or any answer for that matter.

  ‘Here, have some water.’ Asmita was back. She held out a bottle to him. ‘It will help,’ she added.

  It won’t, Saveer thought.

  4

  Saveer had not wanted to come across as rude so he had allowed Gauri and Diggy to continue working as interns at G-Punch. But he had made up his mind to ask them to leave once Prisha joined. Along with her. What he hadn’t expected was Prisha to drop in at the office two days after she was released from the hospital.

  Saveer had walked out of Asmita’s place after he had received another message from Prisha. He had drafted many replies like: I can explain . . . Let’s meet and talk . . . Let me call you . . . I’m not responsible for any of this . . . Sorry, I hid things from you . . . I am the only one responsible . . . Prisha, stay away from me . . . but couldn’t send any of them. In the end, Saveer decided to not respond. She would at the most message again. Or perhaps call. But he wouldn’t reply. He could accept becoming someone wicked in her eyes but he wasn’t ready to take a risk that could lead to someone’s death. More importantly, he couldn’t pretend that in Prisha lay his happiness, even though it was true. For over time the tattoo had stopped reading like a statement or a claim and started sounding more like a direct threat. There was someone out there who had been doing bad things to him . . . and to his loved ones, for years now. The tattoo was a confirmation. Whether it was only Prisha’s fall or if all the deaths had been connected was something he was not sure of yet.

  Saveer was in his cabin responding to some official emails when he casually glanced at the small monitor broadcasting the footage from different CCTVs on the office premises. And in one of them he saw Prisha talking animatedly to Krishna. She was holding a piece of paper. Saveer thought it could be the termination letter that he had asked Krishna to give her if at all she ever came back to office. He noticed that Prisha pushed back Krishna slightly and started heading towards his cabin. Before he could take his eyes off the monitor, Prisha had entered the room. Saveer took his time lifting his eyes off the monitor. He looked up to find her looking at him . . . after six long months.

  But for her, it had seemed like years. From the time she fell down to the time she laid her eyes on him, it couldn’t have been a mere six months, Prisha thought. Though she had many questions but the moment he looked at her, she felt herself burning as if his one look had set her on fire. The kind of fire that can make even the soul dance to the tune of its heat.

  Both were waiting for the other to initiate a conversation. Krishna stepped in excusing himself. Saveer raised his hand and gestured him to leave. Krishna left, closing the door behind him.

  ‘You want me to stop working for G-Punch?’ Prisha asked. There was pain in her voice.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘What else do you want from me, Saveer? Just tell me and I will do it for you,’ Prisha said.

  ‘Do you want to sit down?’ he asked. Prisha plonked down on one of the chairs right opposite Saveer. He pushed a small bottle of Bisleri towards her but she pushed it back towards him. Their eyes were fixed on each other the whole time.

  Saveer stood up and locked the cabin door. Prisha’s eyes followed him around. The click of the lock made her lick her lips nervously. He sighed deeply, trying to frame the words he should have told her when he had fallen for her.

  ‘I’d asked you to stay away from me, Prisha, hadn’t I?’

  ‘I never thought of you as a disease, Saveer. I don’t think I ever will. My coming here today is the second proof of it. My message to you the other night, which you didn’t care to respond, was the first. If there is something due to which you’re asking me to stay away from you then I would appreciate it if you told me about it frankly. If one’s partner is honest, it can immunize one against a lot of things,’ Prisha said.

  Saveer wanted to smile for he had always known that inside the teenager that Prisha was, was a bud of a woman waiting to flower. He was in love with that bud and looked expectantly towards the grand vista of womanhood it promised once it had flowered. But he didn’t smile. He got up and sat on the couch on the other side of the room. Staring at the floor, he said, ‘There have been deaths in my family. My brother, my parents, my dog, my first crush, my best friend and Ishanvi . . . all of
them had died on my birthday. And then it was on my birthday again that you fell off the cliff. So I thought . . .’ his voice trailed off.

  Prisha pushed back her chair and stood up and walked towards him. Saveer started praying for her to not touch him. Because it wouldn’t just be a touch. It would be a war cry for the myriad emotions he had been holding off since she was put inside the ambulance on his birthday. And then they would simply gush out.

  ‘I know you didn’t push me off that cliff,’ Prisha said. She placed her hand on his shoulder. Saveer closed his eyes and then opened them again. Before she knew it, he had scooped her up in his arms and was kissing her. At that moment, Prisha realized how much she had been waiting for this. The action was only an expression of the passion she had always felt for him. And he for her. Their tongues began a fierce exploration as he placed his hands around her bum while she wound hers around his neck. Every touch brought back memories. And Saveer and Prisha reached out for them, hungrily.

  With Prisha clinging to him, Saveer headed towards the window in the cabin. With one hand, he untied the knot and pulled down the blinds. Then he put her down.

  Prisha was wearing a floral dress, which Saveer took off. Then it was her bra. Seconds later, it was Saveer’s shirt. He broke the smooch and knelt down, rubbing his face against her navel while tugging her panty down to her ankle. She kept pulling his hair as his tongue dipped into her belly button. As he kissed his way up, Prisha went down, unbuckling his belt, unzipping his trousers, pulling it down urgently along with his underwear. She held his erect penis in her hand and slowly jerked it as she stood up again. Saveer pushed his tongue inside her mouth, placed his hand on her bare butts and picked her up. Sex, more often than not, is associated with lust but in that moment both Prisha and Saveer realized that it could also be the result of a deep-seated love for each other. Love, which can be caged but not controlled. Love, which can only be asked to behave but never tamed. Love, which was impossible and thus innately desirable.