All Yours, Stranger: Some Mysteries are Dangerously Sexy

by Novoneel Chakraborty

  ‘Now don’t tell me you don’t know who Hiya Chowdhury is!’

  ‘Oh, Hiya, yes . . . What about her?’ Pooja seemed to remember her, much to Rivanah’s relief.

  ‘You tell me anything that I should know about her. I don’t remember much really.’

  ‘Anything? What’s up with you snooping about Hiya?’

  ‘Why did she die, Pooja?’

  The response came a tad later than Rivanah expected.

  ‘How would I know? One day I heard she is no more.’

  ‘She hanged herself from a ceiling fan,’ Rivanah said.

  ‘Oh, did she? Poor thing.’

  ‘What poor thing? You told me this.’

  ‘I did? Why would I say such a thing when I didn’t know it myself?’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  Before Pooja could reply, her phone started to ring.

  ‘Rishi is calling. Excuse me, please.’

  Pooja went out in the balcony with her phone, leaving Rivanah alone in the room. For the next one hour she didn’t come in. Rivanah didn’t understand whether she wanted to avoid her or she was actually glued to Rishi’s phone call. Rivanah went to the balcony after her patience ran out. Pooja excused herself from Rishi over phone and said, ‘I’m so sorry. There’s some problem and . . .’

  ‘It’s fine. I understand. Let’s meet when you are free. I’ll be going home now.’

  ‘Okay. Do come for the marriage next month.’

  Rivanah nodded and waved her friend goodbye. Seeing Rivanah leave Pooja breathed a sigh of relief. Lying never came naturally to her.

  Rivanah went home from Pooja’s place and took a nap. At dinner her father surprised her by asking, ‘How is Danny?’

  Rivanah didn’t know if she should be hopeful since her father sounded grumpy rather than concerned.

  ‘He is good, Baba. He was asking about you too.’

  ‘Hmm. Did he bag any film roles?’

  ‘He signed a regional film. Shooting will begin soon.’

  ‘Hmm. And why exactly is Shantu not talking to me?’

  This one took Rivanah by surprise. There was a momentary eye-lock with her father and she realized that he knew that Abhiraj was taken into custody.

  ‘Abhiraj was stalking me.’

  ‘You could have told us. Why did you have to go to the police yourself?’ Her father’s voice rose.

  Rivanah was quiet. She knew she couldn’t tell him why exactly she had asked the police to butt in.

  ‘Mumma, did you get the scrapbook?’ she asked, changing the topic.

  ‘What scrapbook?’ Her father was still not done with her.

  ‘I need to know about a friend of mine.’

  ‘Which friend?’ her father asked with a frown.

  ‘Hiya Chowdhury.’

  Her father’s frown went away as he quickly looked away from Rivanah.

  ‘Give me some more rice,’ he told his wife and continued, ‘You know what happened in office today?’.

  2

  The next day Rivanah called Pooja inquiring about Hiya’s address. Pooja had no idea where Hiya lived or who her close friends were in their batch. Or so she said. Instead of hounding Pooja, Rivanah chose to update her Facebook status: Guys, remember Hiya Chowdhury? Anyone knows where she lives in Kolkata?

  Three hours later the status had received zero likes, zero comments. Frustrated, Rivanah called up her college. Though it was a Sunday, she knew the college office remained open seven days a week.

  ‘Hello, Techno College? I’m Rivanah Bannerjee; I graduated last year. I’m arranging an alumni meet, so I would like to have the postal addresses of my batchmates to send them invites.’

  ‘That’s a lot of names. I can’t tell you over the phone. You can come here and collect them for yourself. And please bring your college ID along. Any misuse and you will be responsible. ’

  ‘Okay.’

  Rivanah reached college within the hour. Though she came with something else in mind, the sight of the college reignited her love story with Ekansh that she had been trying to extinguish for a while now. The good thing was that the emotional embers associated with the memory didn’t have any flame, but the bad thing was those embers still had heat left in them. Before those embers could do any further emotional damage, she reached the office. Rivanah was made to wait while her ID was checked. Soon she was given a long printout which had the names and corresponding address of all of her forty-three batchmates. It took little time for her to spot Hiya Chowdhury’s name and address. Her house was in Bangur Park in south Kolkata.

  Rivanah took a cab from her college in Salt Lake to Bangur Park. She had to ask around a bit to eventually get to Hiya Chowdhury’s house. As the cab driver drove away Rivanah turned around to look at the house. She pushed the small iron gate open but couldn’t spot anyone or hear any sound coming from inside the house. It was difficult to say if the house was still inhabited. She noticed a white cat atop the terrace looking straight at her and casually moving away as if to inform the owner that someone was here. Rivanah walked to the main door and found that the main door was not locked. She pressed the doorbell. It wasn’t the normal ding-dong but had a weird buzz to it. A moment later, the window adjacent to the main door opened.

  ‘Who is it?’ asked an elderly man.

  ‘Hello, I’m Rivanah Bannerjee, Hiya’s friend.’

  ‘Hiya who?’

  ‘Hiya Chowdhury?’

  ‘You know any Hiya Chowdhury?’ The man turned his face away from Rivanah and asked someone inside the house. Rivanah tried to look but couldn’t see who it was that the man was talking to.

  ‘Chowdhury? She could be Hiren Chowdhury’s daughter,’ said a woman who sounded as elderly as the man behind the window.

  ‘They don’t live here any more,’ the elderly man said, turning towards Rivanah.

  ‘Do you know where—?’

  ‘They were our tenants. These days one doesn’t know where one’s own children live; how can I tell you about our former tenant’s whereabouts?’ the elderly man said curtly and shut the window. A moment later she saw the curtains being drawn as well.

  So, Hiya Chowdhury and her family lived as tenants here. And if not here then there was no way she could hunt Hiya’s family down . . . except if the stranger helped her. It was a dead end as far as Rivanah was concerned. With a heavy heart and a confused mind, she caught a cab once again and went home with two questions clouding her mind. If Hiya was dead and her family was untraceable, why did the stranger lead her to Hiya? And was the scrapbook misplaced by her mother or was it stolen?

  Rivanah took a flight back to Mumbai the next morning. While pushing her luggage trolley out of the airport arrival gate, Rivanah’s eyes were looking for Danny. He would spring a surprise for her by suddenly appearing with a bunch of roses in his hand and that killer smile of his, she thought, looking around outside the exit gate. There was no sign of Danny.

  ‘Madam, wahan jakar wait kijiye please,’ said one of the security personnel by the exit gate, gesturing towards the opposite side. Rivanah didn’t even care to look at him as she pushed her trolley. She checked her WhatsApp on the way. She did tell Danny about her flight timings. He should have been there. She called him but there was no answer. The second and third times too the calls were not picked up, though Rivanah held on for the entire ring. With a clogged mind she took a cab straight to Danny’s friend’s flat in Andheri, Lokhandwala, where she had been living with Danny for about two weeks now. Her parents didn’t have a clue about it. Staying all by herself in Mumbai for a little more than a year, Rivanah had learnt that not everyone had to know about everything that happened in one’s life. The more you shared your things with people, the more you invite opinion about yourself. She was in love with Danny and was comfortable living with him; that was all that mattered. You are married if you feel you are married. And if you are not, then no ritual can ever make you feel so. Rivanah never tried to explain this to her parents; else they would h
ave taken her to some tantric, accusing her of mental imbalance.

  As her cab crossed one traffic signal after another, Rivanah wondered how she had, of late, stopped weighing her relationship with Danny on the weighing scale of marriage. Being with him was more important than any other social licence. The only thing that worried her was that sooner or later her parents would ask her that dreaded question: ‘So, what have you decided about marriage?’ By then would she be able to muster enough courage to be honest with her parents and tell them that she didn’t give a damn about anything except for the fact that she wanted to be with Danny? And he with her.

  Once she reached the apartment, she called Danny’s phone once again but he still didn’t pick up. Going up to the seventh floor in the elevator she checked his last WhatsApp to her: Have a safe flight back baby. Love you. His Last Seen on WhatsApp was when she had boarded the flight.

  Rivanah came out of the elevator and dragged her luggage to the main door. In no time she unlocked it with the spare keys. The single lock told her Danny must be at home because he always double-locked the door if outside.

  ‘Hey baby! I’m home,’ she yelled.

  The response came seconds later. In the voice of a girl.

  ‘Danny is in the shower.’

  Rivanah turned around to notice the girl had wet hair, as if she too had been inside the bathroom with . . .

  3

  ‘Nitya!’ Rivanah said, not sure if she had disguised the fact that she neither expected her in the flat nor did she like it.

  ‘Hi, Rivanah. I’m sorry if I surprised you.’

  ‘I just didn’t expect you here,’ Rivanah said, putting her luggage down on the floor.

  ‘I know. I also don’t want to be here, especially with you and Danny living-in, but you know how Danny is when he gets stubborn. He didn’t give me any option,’ Nitya said and sat on the plush couch, switching on the television. The indifference with which she sat didn’t go well with Rivanah. She knew from before how stubborn Danny could be and it always turned her on emotionally but now she learnt the stubbornness wasn’t something exclusive for her. Somewhere within her the realization formed a knot.

  ‘I hope Danny has told you what happened,’ Nitya said, her eyes fixed on the television. Rivanah’s eyes were fixed on Nitya. What was Danny supposed to tell her about Nitya? Rivanah guessed the worst: Nitya and Danny were a couple now, and she—Rivanah—had been conveniently ousted just as she had been by Ekansh a year back. There was no response for some time. By then Rivanah could feel her guts churning. Danny came out of the bathroom and straight to the drawing room in a vest and knickers, drying his hair with a towel.

  ‘Hey baby! So nice to see you,’ said Danny, hugging her and dropped the towel on a beanbag beside her. There’s no awkwardness in the hug, Rivanah pondered, something that happens naturally when one emotionally distances oneself from the other. She broke the embrace to look Danny in the eye.

  ‘Were you going to tell me something about Nitya and you?’

  Danny shot an incredulous glance at Nitya first and then looking back at Rivanah, said, ‘Let’s go to the other room.’ Danny pulled a bemused Rivanah into the bedroom.

  ‘What is it, Danny? You are scaring me now.’

  ‘Relax. It is not about Nitya and me. It is about Nitya and Nitya only.’

  Rivanah gave him a bored look that said ‘tell me something new’.

  ‘Nitya had a bad, bad break-up with her boyfriend the day you left for Kolkata. She tried to kill herself. I took her to the hospital and then brought her here. The doctor said she shouldn’t be alone right now because she is suicidal.’

  Rivanah sighed, trying to ward off all the obnoxious thoughts in her mind and let the fact register in her.

  ‘So, will Nitya stay here with us?’ she asked.

  Danny nodded.

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘Till she recovers a bit. The doctor said she shouldn’t be allowed to stay alone for some time. She is emotionally fragile.’

  There was an awkward silence between them. Rivanah didn’t want Nitya to stay with them. But she knew if she was honest to Danny it would make her sound rude and he wouldn’t appreciate it either. Before she could tell him her decision, Nitya was in the room.

  ‘I’m sorry if I’m disturbing you; if Rivanah has a problem with me staying here, I’m ready to leave. It’s really not an issue.’

  Danny and Rivanah exchanged a blank look.

  ‘The doctor is mad. I can take care of myself.’

  Rivanah went to Nitya and said, ‘Why would we have a problem, dear? Please feel free to stay here.’

  ‘Cool,’ she said, shooting a look at Rivanah and Danny alternately, and then went away.

  ‘Thank you,’ Danny said, wrapping his arms around Rivanah. Only she knew how much pain it caused her to say ‘yes’ to Nitya. From the day she had first met her a year back, Rivanah never got a vibe from her that said, ‘yeah, we can be friends too’.

  Hunger pushed Rivanah to quickly change and freshen up. Though she had eaten breakfast on the flight itself, she was famished now since it was past noon by the time she entered her flat. She had already told Danny about how she longed to have a pizza when she reached Mumbai. She joined Danny and Nitya in the drawing room after freshening up and asked which pizza she should order.

  ‘Pizza? But I’ve already prepared lunch for us,’ Nitya exclaimed.

  ‘We can eat that at night,’ Rivanah said.

  ‘I was in the kitchen the whole morning preparing salad for us,’ Nitya said, which made it seem like she wasn’t complaining and yet she was.

  ‘You have the salad, Nitya. Danny and I will surely have it at night.’

  ‘But . . .’ Nitya’s voice changed gear.

  ‘Can’t we have pizza at night?’ Danny asked Rivanah. Her jaw would have dropped had she not controlled herself in time.

  ‘Yeah, sure we can,’ she said after a moment.

  ‘I’m sure you will like the salad,’ Nitya said with a smile and went to the kitchen to fetch it. Rivanah could see a sense of victory in that smile which made her feel uncomfortable. Though Rivanah knew Danny was looking at her, pleading for peace, she chose to look at her phone instead.

  For dinner it was pizza indeed but when Rivanah said she wanted to have a Cheese Burst pizza, Nitya said extra cheese gave her a headache. Danny ordered both Cheese Burst as well as a regular one but he ate more from the latter. Rivanah didn’t say anything but could feel frustration brewing in her. She ate only one of the six slices and threw the rest in the garbage and she did so exactly when Danny was looking. He didn’t probe; she didn’t clarify.

  Rivanah went to her room, switched off the lights, plugged her ears and listened to a Lana Del Ray song. A few minutes later she felt her earphones being taken off. She didn’t have to turn around. She knew it was Danny as his hand rested on her tummy.

  ‘Angry?’ he whispered in her ears.

  ‘No,’ she said in a stern voice.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You don’t have to be.’

  ‘Can we go clubbing?’

  ‘Depends on who “we” are.’

  ‘“We” can only mean you and me.’

  Rivanah turned to look at him and said, ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I know you are uncomfortable in Nitya’s presence,’ Danny said once they were in the car. Somebody had to talk about it. Rivanah was glad it was him.

  ‘I’m not uncomfortable, Danny,’ Rivanah said. ‘It’s just that Nitya and I are two different personalities with different tastes. And you know that. Personally I don’t have a problem with Nitya but . . .’

  ‘But . . . ?’

  But . . . your closeness to her burns me. Rivanah wondered how she could dress this naked truth in a way that it didn’t make her sound insecure.

  Danny shrugged at her, still seeking closure.

  ‘But . . . nothing,’ Rivanah sa
id.

  ‘It’s just a matter of a few days.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Rivanah turned the stereo on and rolled down the window to get some fresh air. Danny switched off the AC and asked, ‘Anything about Hiya Chowdhury?’

  Rivanah gave him a sharp glance and then, leaning back on the seat while looking outside, said, ‘Nothing. I tracked down where she used to live but nobody from her family lives there any more. It was a rented place. The owners too don’t know where the Chowdhury family has moved to after Hiya’s death.’

  ‘And did she really die just the way you envisioned in your nightmares?’

  ‘Yes. Pooja said Hiya died after hanging herself from the ceiling fan.’ But Pooja also acted funny, saying she didn’t remember saying so. Rivanah didn’t share this with Danny.

  Danny put his hand on hers. He tightened his grasp as she gave him a relaxed smile. It was a cool night with low traffic. She leaned sideways and kissed him on his cheeks and then licked her way to his ears. The car wobbled on the road.

  ‘Control, baby,’ Danny said. Both had a naughty smile on their faces. Before they could take things one step further, his phone rang. Since the phone was lying on the deck, Rivanah could easily read the name of the caller: Nitya. She pushed the phone towards Danny and rested on her seat again. Danny slowed down as he took the call. The next second he took a U-turn.

  ‘What happened?’ Rivanah asked.

  ‘Nitya has high fever. We have to go back.’

  The concern in his voice saddened her. She knew as a friend he ought to be concerned but what was she to feel, as a girlfriend, about this? No, as an insecure girlfriend. Danny didn’t say a single word as he drove fast to their apartment. Once there Rivanah stayed back in the car as he rushed to the flat. Sitting in the car she wanted to tell someone her point of view. That she wasn’t a bitch who didn’t care if a person had high fever but . . . she unlocked her phone, tapped on Contacts and went to a name that read Stranger.

  She typed a message: Please tell me you are there. She sent it but she didn’t get a delivery report. She chose to wait.

  4