Now That You're Rich: Let's fall in Love!

by Datta, Durjoy

  ‘Look, Saurav. Don’t tell me what to do.’ She got inside the auto. ‘And let me decide who is nice and who is not. I am doing whatever I want to. I am not answerable to you.’

  ‘You just slept with me. Yes, you are answerable to me and I love you.’

  ‘No, you don’t.’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ he said frantically.

  ‘Buzz off.’

  ‘You want a deal, right? I am richer than your guy. I am an IITian for heaven’s sake and my parents are motherfucking rich. I will be with you,’ he shouted.

  ‘Are you drunk?’

  ‘No, I love you.’

  ‘No, you don’t. You think you do because we made out. But you don’t.’

  The auto had went off leaving behind a cloud of dust and haze. Saurav told me he felt really stupid after that.

  He stopped going to the gym, deleted her number, and deleted all pictures of her. He had no choice after she had stopped picking up his calls and had changed her gym timings and instructed the gym people to refuse to tell him when she came.

  Time flew by and he forgot about her. There were withdrawal symptoms but he managed to cope with them, just like Megha had said.

  The twist came after two months when she called Saurav and told him that she had broken up with her boyfriend of three years. She asked if they could meet up and Saurav turned it down, though the prospect of making out again with her was almost too tempting.

  Whatever happened, it did Saurav a world of good, though. He had finally done it before twenty-four, before he was a college graduate. Hail Freud!

  He got close to getting into a relationship a couple of times after that. He almost kissed one girl.

  The first girlfriend, the first love, the first boyfriend and the first fling. Take these seriously for there is always something to learn. I learnt how not to get dumped. It is amazing how many different ways you can get dumped, and I know of six from experience.

  Anyway, Saurav at least learnt something. Don’t go out on proper dates when you can have it three times on three days. You never know when times change. However, he still thought about her but that was only when he had to fantasize. He had moved on.

  4

  Garima was sitting in her room when the results were announced. She looked out of the window wordlessly and thought, maybe it was the way out of her wretched luck.

  Hyderabad.

  She went back to scratching her chipped black nailpaint off her fingers. It had been three years since her nails had seen any other colour. No, she wasn’t a heavy metal fan. She wasn’t a punk or a gothic girl either, though her sheer disdain towards dressing up and an affinity towards the colour black suggested otherwise. For the last three years, she had worn unflattering, loose T-shirts with dirty jeans and chappals. Her frizzy brown hair was always left open and her eyes always had kohl smeared carelessly by her roommate, Aditi. Aditi also used to do all of Garima’s shopping, overloading her wardrobe with all the girly stuff that she never wore, getting her accessories that she never put on. But Garima never stopped Aditi from doing so. At least Aditi felt good about it.

  Aditi had tried more than a million times to draw Garima out of her quietness, but in the last three years, nothing yielded. Garima was herself only when she was drunk and she had made a habit of it.

  Apart from that, she was fine with the emptiness around her, and no matter how hard people tried to get close to her, it never worked. She was a nice person otherwise, helping anyone who needed to be helped, but that didn’t mean she would be friends with them.

  There were a lot of things that worked for her: her smile, which she flashed only if someone did anything stupid; her face, beyond the kohl, fair as the moon and glowing; her dark brown hair that she never thought about cutting. Guys often fell for her, but her cruel disinterest used to break their hearts into a million pieces.

  She wasn’t always like this. She used to be a normal girl.

  Everybody has break-ups. So what if she had had one?

  That is what everyone used to say.

  Garima, about three years ago and days after her board results came out, had caught Karan kissing some other girl, right in front of her eyes, and her world had instantly crumbled. She could have got into any college in Delhi, but she chose Chennai. Away from her home, friends, the few she had, her family and Karan.

  Her family resisted, but they couldn’t stop her from going. She was never refused anything by her family. She was born after her mother’s earlier pregnancy ended in a stillborn twin brother and sister. When she came into the family, their business saw money like it had never seen before and she was always thought of as the reason behind it. She was loved beyond measure by everyone in her family and her word was the first priority. Despite all this, she was hardly spoilt, her demands were rarely extravagant, and her demeanour always sweet and amenable.

  In fact, she rarely asked for anything and took the bus to school like everyone else, while her personal Honda CRV, along with a driver, did not see the light of day. Karan took the same bus every day and they sat together, till the time Karan thought it would be better if they went to school in her car. It would give them more time together, he said.

  Garima never thought it was right to hide things from her mother, so she told her everything about Karan and her mother didn’t say a thing. Right from the day when Karan asked her out on Valentine’s Day to the day he first held her hand, everything was known to her. The subsequent developments were quite obviously never discussed, though her mother politely asked her to be careful and to go slow.

  Her mother never liked Karan, but neither did she have the heart to tell Garima so. Garima was the happiest when Karan proposed to her and her mother was happy to see her daughter smiling and hopping about. The next day, Garima gifted Karan a gleaming new cell phone. Her mother said nothing.

  They were so much in love, or maybe only she was. Karan never reciprocated as much as Garima did, but then he couldn’t possibly match up, Garima thought, as she loved him so much. Karan came from an upper-middle-class family while she was filthy rich. Garima had her own credit card before she was fifteen.

  Everybody knew about the two of them as the ideal couple. Garima was fair and had fuzzy, long hair which reached a few inches below her neck. She stood tall. She had inherited her height from her mother and the hours spent at the basketball court had toned her body to a bikini-perfect state. She had toned legs, a flawless fair complexion and a rock-solid body, and she was one of the fuller girls who were just the right weight.

  And by what I know about Karan, he was pretty good-looking too. But whatever.

  They were envied, praised and loved.

  They were both extremely brainy and often fought for the top position in class. The time that Karan spent at her home often rivalled the time he spent in his own. Her parents were slightly miffed at her when Karan and she spent hours sitting in her room with the door shut, when they were supposedly studying, but they kept silent because they had nothing against Karan. Nobody had anything against Karan. He was a feet-touching, high-scoring, good-looking kid whom everybody loved, from teachers, to friends’ parents to grandparents.

  Though he never did anything out of the ordinary, he never pulled back his words on how much he loved her, and how much he wanted to be with her. He was very smart in these matters.

  Anyway, no matter what everyone thought, Garima did every ridiculous thing in the book to keep him happy. One casual mention about the PlayStation his friend Ketan had got himself and the next month anniversary, he got that in his hands. No matter how fervently he tried to keep her from giving him these gifts, Garima relentlessly made sure he kept them.

  As months passed, Garima’s life started revolving around Karan. She, who once had friends all over, all the time, had just one name governing everything in her life. The friends were slowly left behind; the groups she was in continued without her and she didn’t have any problem with it. She spent her days sitting at home and thinking a
bout him. Garima stopped seeing any point in going out with her friends when she could go out with him instead. All she thought about was him. She woke up with his name on her lips and slept with his name in her heart. Her heart still skipped a beat when she saw his name flashing on the phone. Garima slept every night clutching the cell phone in her hand, just in case he called. Her pulse peaked whenever he said he loved her. The world seemed a much nicer place when he was around.

  She never wanted anything from him. She was just glad that Karan was around to take care of her. Karan worked on extremes. He ignored her right to the point where she would be moments away from tears. And when that happened, he would come up with great lines and some flowers to make her fall in love with him harder.

  Prerna, her best friend once, and now only friend, often warned her against her obsession with Karan, though it hardly mattered. Best girlfriends have always been the biggest enemies of dirty boyfriends.

  ‘Garima, I think you are going too far,’ she said on her now very infrequent visits to her place. Garima had stopped going out unless it was with Karan. Though, he preferred staying at home … for obvious reasons.

  ‘Why, Prerna?’ Girls often lose all sense of reason in love.

  ‘Why? Which girlfriend gives her boyfriend such an expensive watch? It is ridiculous.’

  ‘But he wanted it, Prerna. He wanted it so much.’

  ‘Guys want everything. You can’t go on giving him anything and everything. Tomorrow he will drool after a BMW and are you willing to buy him that, too?’

  ‘I will buy him whatever I want to. And yes, if I have that kind of money, I will buy him everything that he wants. It is my money, why do you care?’

  ‘You are so rude,’ Prerna said, as she gathered her books to leave.

  ‘So are you.’

  ‘See, Garima, I have nothing against you. All I want to tell you is to be careful with Karan. He has been showing off things that you bought him, as his own. And this I know for sure. That iPod you gifted? He denied that you had given it to him. I swear on my mom. But you do whatever you feel like. Just that he was also spotted with Ritika, the one from the science section, a couple of times. Just open your eyes for heaven’s sake.’

  ‘Whatever,’ Garima said and stared at her book, her eyes already turning away from even the thought of it.

  ‘Whatever.’

  Prerna left.

  Garima started crying. She was livid at whatever Prerna had just said and she was already imagining him with Ritika.

  I don’t know Karan, but why would anyone, I mean anyone, leave a hot, rich, girlfriend who lets you into her bedroom, to go out with some average-looking girl? We are a strange species. Us, men.

  Going back to that day, Garima sat there crying, weighing whether or not to ask him about Ritika. After an hour of deliberation, she called up Karan. He kept rejecting her calls as he said he would. The next day was Garima’s birthday and the board result celebration and he had said he would be busy preparing for it.

  She called up his friends and the third one gave away the venue of the surprise party. The place was a five-minute drive from her place and Garima drove over in her night suit, only to regret doing so.

  She caught Karan in the parking lot with Ritika.

  Kissing.

  No matter what Karan did afterwards, it made no difference to her. She was leaving for Chennai. Three years away from her home, that house, that city, that bedroom, that car, and the world she lived in.

  Away from everything.

  It was only after the break-up, that she realized she loved him more than she had ever imagined. She cried for days, stopped eating and harboured suicidal tendencies. She felt used and cheated. Her world had crashed right in front of her eyes. She thought it would take a lifetime to build it again. She was wrong.

  Love is not what you live for. Love is what makes it a little easier.

  5

  Monday, 4 August.

  8.00 a.m.

  I will not bathe.

  Snooze.

  8.10 a.m.

  I will not shave.

  Snooze.

  8.20 a.m.

  I will take a cab.

  Snooze.

  8.30 a.m.

  What the fuck?

  Turns off alarm.

  9.30 a.m.

  Great. Up before the alarm. Not bad for the first day, Saurav told himself and reached out for his cell phone, a swanky new N96, a phone he had seen the Roadies, the bickering contestants of a popular reality television show, carry. He wondered why his phone said six missed calls. Then he saw the small clock on the top of the screen.

  9:40.

  9:40?

  What the fuck? How is this possible?

  The alarm didn’t ring; he was sure.

  He got up in a flash, cursing the phone for its meek, powerless bullshit speakers.

  ‘Does it have FM and an alarm?’ That’s what his mom asked him when he had bought this brick-sized phone and told her about the GPS navigation system. If only he had taken her seriously. He shaved. He took a bath. He couldn’t afford to look bad; he wanted all the attention he could get from the girls. He had seen gorgeous banker girls in the movies and he couldn’t possibly miss out on them!

  He put on his new white and blue striped Louis Vuitton shirt and slipped into his pinstriped Hugo Boss trousers, and a tie from Ermenegildo Zegna.

  Saurav had lost a lot of weight since the days of Megha, but you still wouldn’t call him thin, fit or anywhere near that.

  He patted his paunch and cursed IIT, for it had made him fat, which it had. He checked his tie for the last time, and ordered a cab. He kept his hands away from the sandwich which was left over from yesterday. Today, for the millionth time he thought, he would start dieting.

  He was ready for his first day at office.

  And was late by forty-five minutes. Already.

  10.15 a.m.

  The cab would still take fifteen minutes.

  Last week had been a wild goose chase across the length and breadth of the city to find a suitable house. So much so, that it had almost spoilt the whole fun of staying at Taj Banjara, the last word in luxury hotels, which was paid in full by Silverman Finance. Three gyms, two pools, breakfast buffets, super-hot hotel management grads, et al. He had asked a few of the housekeeping staff for their numbers, but it didn’t work out. Even saying that he was an IIT graduate didn’t help. Sluts, he told himself. To get back at them, he stuffed all the shampoos, soaps and combs into his bag before he left the hotel.

  Anyway, he had managed a flat, at walking distance from that hotel, quite ironically.

  Saurav had already started missing Delhi and the beautiful Delhi girls. They were more receptive to I-am-from-IIT-Delhi.

  ‘Naye ho, sahab?’

  ‘Haan.’

  ‘Twenty minutes to reach there,’ he said with a typical Hyderabadi accent.

  ‘Just be a little quick,’ he said, as he opened the newspaper. It was a great feeling. Only if the car would have been a Lexus and his own. He had refused the car his dad offered to take to Hyderabad, saying that he was good enough to buy one of his own!

  He put the newspaper aside and started fiddling with his phone. A good thirty minutes later, they reached a maze of huge buildings and wide roads. If Delhi traffic was bad, this was worse. Nobody shouted or charged at each other with iron rods, but they were pretty much banging into each other all the time!

  10.45 a.m.

  He was an hour and a half late. It was 11 a.m. when he saw the building from a distance. The building was as humungous as it was beautiful. Steel and curved glass formed an imposing structure and its monstrosity made him feel terribly insignificant. I remember going through the same emotion. A big building. A taller woman. They all do that to you; they intimidate you.

  As Saurav’s car approached the entrance, the top of the building was no longer visible. There were a few honks from cars nearby and a smug-faced guard appeared and said something foul in a s
outh Indian language. Saurav, too, abused, just to retort.

  ‘Sahab, you have to get down outside only. Only personal cars allowed,’ the cabby said. Saurav got down and paid the cab-driver who drove away. Seven hundred fifty bucks for a cab ride and he would still be seen walking to the office! He still wasn’t out of his awe of the building when he saw something else which left a lasting impression on his mind.

  The driveway.

  The car right behind him was an Audi.

  The car right behind the Audi was a BMW 7 series.

  The car next to it was a Mercedes C class.

  And the car which he almost banged into, a Honda CRV.

  He would buy the Audi, he made up his mind. He was not a big fan of Asian cars.

  An hour earlier, Abhijeet was standing where Saurav was now.

  Abhijeet had stood outside the door for a few seconds, taken a deep breath and let it out. It was a new him entering through those doors, those doors that led him to a new life, which had fame, success and money at every step.

  Saurav swung open the revolving door and strode in with a big smile, looked at everybody who walked past and smiled at them. I remember seeing him then. He looked funny and fat, even in his expensive clothes.

  After a few seconds of awkwardly looking at the huge empty space in front of him, with his mouth half open, he started looking for the reception. The ceiling of Silverman Finance is about fifty feet high and the place is brightly lit in a brownish yellow glow accentuated by the same coloured marble below. It is an insanely huge hall. One walk around the Silverman office and you start feeling small. It’s practically an entire city inside an office.

  He walked up to the far corner of the huge hall, where the reception was. Saurav peered across the huge wooden desk, shining as if it had been polished just a moment ago, behind which were seven people manning it, headsets on their ears and a big smile over their faces. All of them beautiful, their lips shining with gloss.

  A large sign hung overhead, with bright yellow lights shining behind it.